NASCAR Camping World Truck Series

At this point in the 2009 season, the same motto is being put to use by Moss’ No. 5 Exide Batteries Toyota Tundra team and veteran racer Mike Skinner. The team and Skinner have already visited Victory Circle three times this season, including back-to-back wins earlier this month at Iowa Speedway and Gateway International Raceway on their way to third in the point standings.

However, with a 246-point deficit to championship leader Ron Hornaday and six races left on the calendar, the focus for both driver and team shifts to winning as many races as possible. At some level, that’s the way they like it.

“With the points battle where it is, obviously, our goal is to try and win the points deal, but on the other side of things, we’re awful far behind,” explains crew chief Eric Phillips. “Without Hornaday having some trouble, it’s going to be awful tough to beat him. The way we’ve approached it is, we’re just trying to go out and win, ‘cause if we win races, we’re going to score the most points.

“I’d rather be chasing. I mean, I guess you always want to be leading, but at this point in time, we don’t have anything to lose. We have everything to gain, so we can go out and just try to win races. At the end of the day, that’s probably the best situation.”

“We got really in a points racing mode early in the year,” Skinner adds. “That’s just not me too much. I think I still have to points race to a degree, but we’ve been really, really blessed. We’ve won a couple of races in a row and we want to win another race or so. That’s our goal.”

Skinner acknowledges that more than trying to catch Hornaday, he really has his sights set on Matt Crafton, who is currently second in the standings and leads Skinner by 29 points. He also wants to keep the likes of Brian Scott and Colin Braun, who are currently fourth and fifth in points, respectively, securely in his mirrors.

“It’s mathematically possible for us to still win the championship, but right now, that’s not really our mindset,” Skinner explains. “Our mindset is to try and finish second and our real race is with Matt Crafton, not Ron Hornaday right now. If Ron has some problems, our race may become with him, but right now, it’s not.”

Skinner’s mindset comes from a great deal of experience in the Truck Series. The inaugural champion of the series in 1995, Skinner owns 28 career Truck victories, 88 top-five finishes and 126 top 10s.

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” he says. “The neat thing about it is, I don’t feel like I have to prove myself every time I strap in behind the wheel. It’s a good feeling. I enjoy my job, I enjoy racing, and I’m really working hard to try and get better and make our stuff better. Make the driver better. Make it all better. You never quit learning.”

The 2009 season has certainly been another learning experience for Skinner and the Randy Moss Motorsports team. It wasn’t until early January – barely a month before the season-opening race at Daytona – that Skinner and the team made their deal for the season.

Skinner and Phillips agree that at least another month or two of would have been beneficial. Skinner also points out that the team could use more funding, as the team’s mechanics are pulling double duty and serving as the No. 5 Tundra’s over-the-wall crew on race day.

“Basically, we’ve already exceeded my expectations,” Skinner says. “I’m real, real proud of these guys. I know exactly how much money we’ve taken in this year in sponsorships and we’re really grateful to Exide Batteries and PC*MILER and everybody else that has contributed to this year to this point.

“We’re really, really happy about that, but we have got to this point so far on less than a third of what it takes to do this. Man, I couldn’t be happier with the guys. We know our pit stops are a little subpar. We know it and there’s nothing we can do about it right now. These guys are working their tails off. They practice almost every day and they’re the greatest bunch of guys you could ever ask for, but these are the guys that are building those trucks. These are the guys that are assembling those trucks, and then they have to go over the wall and try to service the truck.”

With that in mind, Phillips points out that having a driver like Skinner on the team is extremely helpful. His experience makes him that much more valuable, especially in a year in which the team switched to Toyota Tundras and brought a pair of new drivers on board in Skinner and rookie Tayler Malsam.

“It just gives some stability back to the race team,” says Phillips, who has been with the team for five years since it was known as Morgan Dollar Motorsports. “The last couple years, we’ve had a lot of rookies and a lot of different drivers drive, so that becomes very hard to get a definite direction on your program. That’s the biggest thing that Mike has helped us with. We’re going down a path and getting better every week.

“That’s really hard to do with multiple drivers and with drivers that don’t have a lot of experience. Mike knows what he wants. Sometimes, you’ve got to learn how to get that out of each driver, but after you’ve worked with them, the better idea you get. I think that’s the biggest thing. He’s a leader. He knows how to pump the guys up when they’ve had a bad day or if they’ve got a bad pit stop, he understands it’s a team and we’ve all got to work together and pull the rope in the same direction and we can be successful at this.”

Skinner, meanwhile, has very much enjoyed his 2009 campaign and is looking toward the future with Randy Moss Motorsports. Oh, and he clearly wants to keep running up front.

“No matter what happens, we’ve had a good season,” he concludes. “For the cards that were dealt to us back there on January 1, I have no complaints. I think we have exceeded our expectations. It’s like anything else, though. You set a goal and you achieve the goal, and as soon as you achieve the goal, you just raise the bar higher.

“You want to win a race. Well, we won a race. Then, we won another race and we were thinking, ‘Wow, that’s pretty good! Now we just need some top fives.’ Then, we won another race. Hell, now we want to win another one! I guess we’re getting greedy.”