Hornaday Jr. picks up first win of the season at ORP

Autoracing Betting Lines

07/23/2010 - Clermont, IN (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Ron Hornaday Jr. snapped a 22-race winless streak in the Camping World Truck Series with an impressive performance in Friday's AAA Insurance 200 at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis.

Hornaday Jr., the four-time and defending series champion, took the lead from pole sitter Timothy Peters after 62 laps and dominated from there. Peters reclaimed the top position during the fifth and final caution when he opted to stay on track, while most of the leaders, including Hornaday, pitted for the last time.

Shortly after the final restart, Hornaday and Kyle Busch chased down Peters. Hornaday then made his winning pass with 48 laps remaining. He finished two seconds ahead of Busch for his 46th career truck victory, but his first since August 1, 2009 at Nashville.

"It was just a great day," said Hornaday, who led 129 of 200 laps. "Hopefully, it keeps everybody a little bit quiet, but it took [crew chief] Ernie [Cope] to come here and settle everyone down, because the guys were getting a little anxious. We know we've got a winning team, but we just had to prove it to them."

One year ago at ORP, Hornaday made series history by becoming the first driver to win four races in a row. Hornaday extended his record to five consecutive victories the following week at Nashville.

At the end of the 2009 season, Hornaday's then crew chief Rick Ren left his Kevin Harvick Inc. team and moved over to Kyle Busch's new Truck Series team to serve as director of competition.

Hornaday also won a truck event at ORP in 1997 and 2007. He will compete in Saturday's 200-lap Nationwide Series race for Kevin Harvick Inc.

Busch's second-place run was his best finish at this short 0.686-mile oval.

"We made it through the evening pretty well," Busch said. "I thought we had a shot to win there and battle with Hornaday a little bit. I felt like if maybe I could have stayed in front of him the results would have been a little different, but we knew going into practice, he was a little bit better than we were. Unfortunately, we just didn't have enough for him tonight."

Matt Crafton finished third, while Johnny Sauter and James Buescher rounded out the top-five.

Rookie Austin Dillon took the sixth spot, followed by Todd Bodine, the current points leader, Brad Sweet and David Starr.

Peters, who led 71 laps, faded in the late-stages and wound up finishing 10th.

Bodine now holds a 177-point advantage over Aric Almirola, who crashed halfway through the race and ended up with a 31st-place finish. Almirola got collected in an accident involving Mario Gosselin and Narain Karthikeyan.

"We're struggling, and we're racing for 20th," Almirola said. "We were trying to work on our truck and get it better with a hundred laps to go, and [Karthikeyan] kept running into me every corner. This place is as wide as they come for short tracks."

With the win, Hornaday moved up to fourth in the standings, trailing Bodine by 212 points.

Johanna Long made an impressive debut in the series with a 17th-place run. Long, who drove the No.15 Toyota for Billy Ballew Motorsports, became the youngest female to compete in a truck race at age 18.

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Big Ten Conference odds

Teams that should be in: Michigan State, Indiana
Work left to do: Illinois, Purdue, Michigan, Iowa

Behind the big two, the pecking order might be in a bit of flux. Has Michigan State passed Indiana after handling the Hoosiers in East Lansing? Where is Illinois in that mix? What looked like a four-big league last week could be morphing into five -- and even six is not unthinkable at this point if everything breaks right.

Should be in:

Michigan State [21-8 (8-6), RPI: 20, SOS: 15] The Spartans made it four-for-four on the homestand, a gigantic accomplishment that leaves them in extremely good shape. MSU is only 1-6 on the road and is at Michigan and at Wisconsin to close things out, meaning the date with the Wolverines on Tuesday looms very, very large. Beating Texas early will hold up well, as will the rout of Bradley and the win over BYU, but will 8-8 be enough? It very well could be, as the computer numbers are good, but why chance it?

Indiana [18-9 (8-6), RPI: 24, SOS: 32] Hmm ... good thing the last two are at Northwestern and home to Penn State, because IU might want to get both to feel completely safe after dropping its third in the last four, fading after halftime at Michigan State. Who knew the best nonconference win would be over Southern Illinois, which is a gift that keeps on giving for the Hoosiers. The win over Wisconsin also looks good on the mantel.

Work left to do:

Illinois [21-9 (9-6), RPI: 31, SOS: 25] A good performance at Penn State leaves the Illini in pretty good shape. Can they go to Iowa and take care of business to really look on their way? That's a huge game, as there is a possible cluster of teams that will end at 9-7. Illinois beat Bradley, but has lost to Xavier. A 9-7 mark and a semifinals trip in Chicago could be enough with the computer profile hanging in there, but it would be better not to mess around, clinching at least a tie for third.

Purdue [18-10 (7-7), RPI: 47, SOS: 28] Couldn't get it done at Iowa, but did win at Northwestern to put 9-7 squarely in sight. Where does that leave the Boilermakers, though? Even if they beat Minnesota and Northwestern at home, that won't help the computer numbers. Nonconference wins over Virginia, DePaul and Oklahoma are solid, but not spectacular. The Boilers very well might need an upset in the B10 quarters to have a legit claim.

Michigan [19-10 (7-7), RPI: 55, SOS: 53] Well, Michigan did what it needed to do, winning at Minnesota to take control of its fate. The Wolverines have Michigan State and an already-wrapped-up-the-league Ohio State at home to close, so the chances are there. Win both and we can talk. There is no marquee win yet in the profile, and the Wolverines were splattered in several games against name opponents. A mediocre computer profile fueled by a lack of road wins isn't helping, either.

Iowa [16-12 (8-6), RPI: 80, SOS: 64] For the sake of being complete, we'll add Iowa, this season's Stanford. It's plausible that the Hawkeyes could get to 10-6 (at Penn State, vs. Illinois left), but where does that leave them after a gruesome nonconference performance where the best win was over ... Toledo? Iowa State? Cornell?? If they get to 10-6, we can start to look at what they need to do in the B10 tourney, although my gut sense is that they would need to make the final and have knocked off Ohio State or Wisconsin on the way to have any real claim.

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