NASCAR Camping World Truck Series

In the final week of 2008, Randy Moss Motorsports’ NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series team had yet to switch to Toyota Tundras and team owner Randy Moss’ New England Patriots missed the NFL playoffs despite an 11-win season.

Fast forwarding 12 months, Moss and the Pats have clinched a playoff berth and are contenders for the NFL title, just as the Toyota-powered Randy Moss Motorsports team expects to contend for the 2010 Truck Series championship. That’s certainly the goal for David Dollar, Moss’ co-owner in the team.

“It’s definitely to go out and secure a championship for Randy Moss Motorsports and Toyota,” Dollar says. “That’s the number one goal right there. As we look forward, we’re excited.”

Dollar, Moss and the rest of the RMM team have plenty of reason to be excited, especially after building solid momentum with a strong campaign in 2009. In January, the team made the decision to join forces with Toyota and bring on a pair of drivers that were new to the team in rookie Tayler Malsam and inaugural Truck Series champion Mike Skinner.

It was quite an undertaking, especially so late in the offseason, but it proved to be a good decision. Skinner earned three victories, three pole positions, eight top fives and 17 top-10 results on his way to third in the final season standings. The 20-year-old Malsam, meanwhile, finished 12th in the overall standings and second in the race for Rookie of the Year honors on the strength of a season-best fifth-place run at Gateway International Raceway and 10 top-10 results.

That would be a solid season for even the most seasoned teams in the Truck Series, but it was even better for a team that had so many new components.

“All in all, I feel like it was a great season for us,” says Dollar. “We made the decision in January to switch manufacturers to Toyota, which was a great decision for us, but from a competition standpoint, we had a lot of things to learn.

“We hit the ground running and I’m happy to say it. Every time we went to a racetrack, it was like starting over with a clean sheet of paper on all of our notes. To look back and see that we sat on three poles and had three wins and challenged for several more, and to wind up third in points in our first year campaigning a Toyota is just unbelievable.”

Strong results are also an extremely valuable commodity for a team looking for sponsorship support. In 2009, the team managed to get by on a less than ideal budget, but Dollar feels that may change in 2010.

“All these sponsors and these companies – and as we all know, it’s no different than anybody that participates in this at this level – you have to have a return on investment,” Dollar explains. “That’s running up front and the opportunities that we’ve had definitely generate a higher TV number and exposure rate for our programs. That’s an important statistic to take into sponsorship meetings.

“These sponsors want to win, because they know it garners more publicity and stuff. There’s nothing greater than standing in Victory Lane. It definitely has helped tremendously and we’re fortunate to say at this point that we’ve brought together some more marketing partners to go after that championship next year.”

In 2010, Skinner will go after the championship in the team’s No. 5 Tundra, but the team is still looking to fill the seat of the No. 81 Tundra. Malsam has moved on to the new Kyle Busch Motorsports team for 2010 to drive the new No. 56 Tundra.

“We’re looking for the 81 right now and we’ve got several opportunities,” says Dollar. “What we’re looking for is to put a program together there with a driver that has maybe a little more experience and time on the racetrack that can help take both programs and move them that next step farther.”

Getting both of the team’s Tundras as close as possible to the top of the boxscore on a race-to-race basis and to the top of the championship standings is a goal that comes from the top down. Now entering his third year as a Truck Series team owner, Moss stresses the team concept, as one would expect from a future pro football hall of famer.

According to Dollar, Moss spends as much time as he can with the race team during the NFL offseason and the superstar wide receiver follows it from afar with many of his Patriots teammates in football season.

“He’s brought a lot of attention to our program and NASCAR altogether,” says Dollar. “When you take an individual like Randy that’s a high-profile athlete in the National Football League, it definitely brings a lot of notoriety to our program. It’s been a great relationship and I think we’ve brought on a lot of new fans as well that may not necessarily have tuned into NASCAR or the Truck Series, but now with Randy’s involvement, I think that’s brought a huge fan base to us. We’re excited about that.

“Randy is a competitor, no doubt about it. He’s a fierce competitor and has to be for what he does, and he understands team and team unity and getting the team pumped up. He’s a pretty good motivator. He’s excited about what we’ve got going on, as well as sitting back and being able to watch and see how the team has grown and moving forward. Of course, nothing is more special for anybody – much less an owner like Randy – to get his first win in the series and then back that up with a couple more wins.”

If things progress as they did in 2009, Moss could hoist two important trophies in 2010: the Vince Lombardi Trophy alongside his Patriots teammates in the first weekend of February, followed by the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Trophy with his Randy Moss Motorsports on the weekend before Thanksgiving.