NASCAR Camping World Truck Series

The driver from Providence, N.C. – near the border between North Carolina and Virginia and just a few miles from Martinsville Speedway – was battling every week just to make it to the racetrack with his small race team.

“I started off last year at this time with my own team here in my hometown, and I didn’t know if we were going to the next race,” Peters recalls. “I was handling a lot of business stuff and a little bit of the mechanic stuff. There was only two of us. It may sound weird, but when you left town to go to the race, it was almost like a vacation, because you weren’t just working your guts out at the shop.”

His fortunes changed in early June, when Red Horse Racing owner Tom DeLoach provided Peters with an opportunity to drive one of his Toyota Tundras and relieved the pressure of trying to operate his own team. The move paid off immediately, as Peters began racking up top-10 results with regularity in the No. 17 Red Horse Toyota.

Then came his hometown race in Martinsville on October 24, when Peters completed the fairy tale with his first career Truck Series victory on what was essentially home soil. By the end of the 25-race season, Peters gained eight spots to finish eighth in the final championship standings.

Through the off season, Peters and the team prepared for an even bigger and better 2010 campaign, and crew chief Jeff Hensley was brought in to oversee the No. 17 team in December. And in the season-opening race at Daytona in February, Peters and Red Horse Racing had a resounding answer for the question of whether or not the team could carry its momentum into the new season.

Peters drove that No. 17 Red Horse Racing/Crescent Tools Tundra to Victory Lane at the most prestigious race on the schedule.

“It was probably the biggest win of my career,” says Peters of winning Daytona. “I wouldn’t take anything back from how Martinsville went down and how I won it in my hometown, but it’s almost like maybe it was expected a little bit because I’ve had success there in the past and I’ve always run well in the truck and the stock car there. I was very fortunate to get my win there, but it helped me tremendously to win Daytona and put that on my résumé.”

The win in the season opener obviously put Peters atop the Truck Series point standings, where he spent the early stages of the 2010 season. He followed his Daytona victory by taking three straight top-10 finishes, including back-to-back fourth-place runs in Round 3 at Martinsville and Round 4 at Nashville.

Then came Round 5 at Kansas Speedway earlier this month, where Peters and the Red Horse Racing team found their first bit of adversity. An alternator problem removed Peters from contention for the victory, but perseverance by him and the team brought the No. 17 home 23rd with valuable championship points and kept him in the points lead.

“You never want to go to a racetrack and have any type of mechanical problem,” says the 29-year-old driver. “But the other side of the coin is that it builds character for the whole team. It’s racing. If you went through a whole season and didn’t have any problems, then I don’t know what you would call it.”

Round 6 at Dover last weekend was another character builder, as a crash relegated Peters to 25th in the final race standings. For the first time this season, he fell out of the points lead.

He is now third in the championship, trailing new leader Aric Almirola by 72 points and second-place Todd Bodine by 45 points. But there’s still a long way to go, and it’s important to remember that Peters made up eight spots in last year’s championship with fewer races remaining than this.

Despite the recent setbacks, it’s remarkable to think that in the span of just one year, Peters has gone from battling just to make it from one race to the next to battling for a championship. To say he is thankful for the opportunity he’s gotten from Red Horse Racing would be an understatement.

“Tom gives us the resources that we need, Toyota gives us the resources that we need, everybody in the shop believes in the organization and believes in myself, and I believe in the whole organization and every individual that’s a part of Red Horse Racing,” says Peters. “I can’t thank Tom enough for what he’s done for my career, because he’s basically put me on the map.”

One could say that Peters did the same for Red Horse Racing, but the humble driver doesn’t see it that way.

“It isn’t anything that I have done to put all the spotlight on me,” he says. “I just am very fortunate. I’m just a country boy that’s had a lot of good opportunities, and I’m fortunate enough to capitalize on the opportunity that I have now.”

However, Peters does acknowledge that the team has earned a lot of respect. He also now knows that every time he shows up at the racetrack, he’s got a legitimate shot to win the race. His competitors know it too.

“I’m the lucky one that gets to sit behind that steering wheel,” he says. “It makes it more comfortable when you know that you can unload off that trailer and be fast week in and week out like we have been fortunate enough to be so far. I just hope we can keep this momentum going and hope that we can get this championship run to the end.”

If he won the 2010 Truck Series title, it would be another eight-position gain in the championship standings from the end of the 2009 season to the end of this year.

It would be the best way for him to show his appreciation for everything DeLoach and Red Horse Racing has done for him. And it would also be yet another example of the difference a year can make.