NASCAR Camping World Truck Series

It wasn’t a stretch for DeLoach. Peters had driven the No. 17 Strutmasters.com Toyota Tundra to nine top-10 and three top-five results, as well as the pole position at Nashville Superspeedway, in the 12 races since Peters’ first RHR start at Michigan. He was 19th in the championship standings when he joined the team in June, but had moved comfortably into the top-10 in just four months.

On the next day, Peters repaid DeLoach for his support in the best possible way, by driving the Red Horse Racing Tundra into Victory Lane for the first time. For the 29-year-old from Danville, Va., just a few miles away from Martinsville, he couldn’t have drawn up a more perfect scenario.

“It was definitely a perfect ending to a fairy tale,” Peters said. “It’s by far the most emotional win. As far as the trophy goes and to win at home, it’s the best win that I’ve ever had in my racing career. I can’t say enough about Tom DeLoach for giving me a break to come over here and drive these beautiful machines I’m still in awe that we won a race, but the way we’ve been running, I just felt that we could do it. I’m just glad we were able to do it at home.”

The victory certainly didn’t come as a surprise to DeLoach. He knew in his heart that Peters and the team had more than enough ability to win. However, the waning laps in Martinsville were certainly intense for all involved as there were real fears that Peters would run out of fuel short of the finish line.

“When I get nervous, I eat candy bars and the guys were asking me, ‘How many did you eat?’” DeLoach said. “I was so nervous that I couldn’t eat anything. I could barely swallow. My heart is pumping in my throat.

“You’re saying, ‘OK, no cautions. Let’s make sure the tires are OK. The fuel should be OK.’ But we were worried about the fuel, worried about the tires, worried about somebody wrecking in front of us. All of those things are going through your mind as you’re counting down the laps. It’s, ‘OK, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon,’ and we made it! Then I could start breathing again.”

“I never heard it stumble,” Peters added. “But I promise you one thing, I could hear everything a little more than usual.”

The victory came in the 64th start of Peters’ Truck Series career and the 21st race of the 2009 season. In the first 20 races of the season, Peters drove a truck that carried the No. 17. In Martinsville, Peters’ truck, appropriately enough, wore the No. 1.

“There’s another team that has the rights to the 17, and NASCAR cannot give two people the rights to the 17,” DeLoach explains. “So we have to buy a license as the number 117, which means we are first in line to use the 17 if the 17 doesn’t show up. That team fielded a truck with the 17 on it, so we had to switch off and use another number. Since we already had the number 1 in house, we just put our other number on the truck and ran with that.”

It would seem reasonable to expect that both DeLoach and Peters would prefer to continue using the No. 1 given the good luck it brought the team in Martinsville. However, the Strutmasters.com Tundra was back to its familiar No. 17 last weekend at Talladega, where Peters finished 11th.

“I think both (DeLoach) and I are partial to the 17,” Peters said. “We’re going to have it on for the rest of the races that are left.”

Regardless of the number on the side of the truck, Peters is focused on finishing inside the top five in the final 2009 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series point standings. He trails sixth place Brian Scott by just one point and is 31 points back of fifth-place Colin Braun with three races left on the schedule.

“We’re going to see if we can get some more victories, but also get solid top-five and top-10 finishes,” Peters says. “Hopefully, we can execute on getting to that fifth place in driver points.

“We’re just going to keep on trucking right along and get ourselves through Texas, Phoenix and Homestead and just see where it goes from there. I know that at the beginning of this year, going into Daytona, I thought it would be unbelievable if we could just win a race. I want to be as humble as I can about it, but we won a race. I don’t want to get greedy, but I want to win another one, because the feeling is incredible.”

As far as DeLoach is concerned, he believes Peters has what it takes to celebrate many more victories in the Truck Series.

“He’s a smart racer,” DeLoach says. “He gets what’s going on, he sizes up his competition and he knows that all he’s got to do is get around for the win at the end. He’s a smart racer, but let me tell you, that rascal can get up on the wheel and really drive. That’s what I was seeing early on. I haven’t been disappointed whatsoever, and that’s why we’ve already extended his contract through the 2010 season.”

And if all goes according to plan in 2010, Peters, DeLoach and Red Horse Racing could be No. 1 once again.