CHAFFIN HOPES HIS 100TH CAREER TRUCK SERIES START IN TEXAS
WILL HELP HIS KEY MOTORSPORTS TEAM FORGET ABOUT ATLANTA

MOORESVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA (October 30, 2007) – Veteran driver Chad Chaffin will make his 100th career NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start in Friday night’s Silverado 350K event at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. It will be the Tennessee native’s attempt to help his Key Motorsports team put last week’s forgettable outing in Atlanta behind them.

In his fourth start for the Curtis W. Key, Sr.-owned race team, Chaffin was carrying a 2-race, top ten finishing streak with him into last Saturday’s AMS event with high hopes for continuing his team’s recent surge. It took just 44 laps for those high hopes to end when a wreck not of Chaffin’s choosing put him out.

“We were having a tough day to begin with, what with a loose race truck, but that wreck just made it that much worse because we had really nothing to do with it,” said Chaffin, who in his five races with Key Motorsports so far this season has crashed out twice to finish 36th in each of those outings, was 16th in Las Vegas and also posted the highest finishes ever for his young team in truck series competition with an 8th in Talladega and a 7th in Martinsville.

“This team has what it takes to compete, but sometimes in this business things happen that you have no answer for and just have to keep going. We just have to pick up the pieces from Atlanta and head to Texas with the attitude that we won’t have the same things happen to us again and that we’re going to have a good run,” Chaffin stated. “I expect to have a top 20 truck at the absolute worst and a truck that we can maybe squeeze out a top 15 or top 10 if things go our way,” he added.

Chaffin has enjoyed success at the fast, mile-and-a-half TMS tri-oval before and loves the track. “Texas is a smooth, fast track that has good transitions from the corners to the straight-aways. It’s a fun place to drive but even more fun when you have the equipment to run well and in contention,” he added.

The 39-year-old Chaffin ran his very first NCTS race back in 2000 at the old Nashville Fairgrounds Raceway and promptly found success with a third place finish. He then followed that up with a fourth place effort in Memphis, and Chaffin thought he had found gold.

“I really thought at the time that this truck racing stuff was pretty easy, but it didn’t take me long to find out just how competitive the Series really is. And it has only gotten tougher as the years passed,” he confessed.

But Chaffin has found other successes in the NCTS and found victory lane for the very first time at Dover, DE in 2004 when he was in his second season with Bobby Hamilton Racing driving the Dickies Dodge. In fact, Chad won twice that season, finding the checkers again at the Indianapolis Raceway Park en route to a second straight tenth place finish in the driver championship race.

At Texas, Chaffin has compiled a solid performance record in the trucks. He has run six races to date and has chalked up one top five and two top ten finishes and has only finished out of the top 20 once. His starting positions have been equally as attractive with three top 10 qualifying efforts and only one out of the top 20.

Chaffin is hoping to maintain such a record again this weekend and to highlight his 100th career start. It would go a long way in helping his Key Motorsports team put the Atlanta memory truly behind them.