Only a couple of weeks removed from the kickoff to the 2010 NASCAR season at Daytona, it’s time to break out the crystal ball and wager some predictions for the upcoming NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season.

If there ever was a question regarding Ron Hornaday’s place in NASCAR history, the driver of the No. 33 Kevin Harvick Inc. truck belted out a resounding answer in 2009. After posting five consecutive wins in the middle of the summer, the Longhorn Chevy driver captured his fourth championship in dominant fashion. Keep in mind he lost the 2008 title to Johnny Benson by one on-track position and a total of seven points. With 45 career wins, Ron Hornaday is truly the best NCWTS driver of all time. Now the focus turns to whether or not he can become the first driver in the division’s 16-year history to win back-to-back championships.

With Daytona just around the corner, our SPEED broadcast team once again is fired up to cover the very best racing in all of NASCAR. So, in keeping with tradition, I called up our team and asked them to predict the 2010 champ. (Because he may be a Truck Series competitor this season, I have excluded Michael Waltrip).

In step with last season, four of five announcers think Hornaday will finish first or second in the run for the Camping World trophy. Rick Allen and Phil Parsons have “Horn-blower” winning championship number five. Krista Voda and Adam Alexander predict Matt Crafton and the Thorsport team will be at the top in November and I expect Mike Skinner and Gene Nead to make a formidable combination that will pull off an upset for Randy Moss Motorsports.

This year’s Raybestos Rookie of the Year title should be fun to watch. The black No. 3 returns to fulltime competition with young Austin Dillon, grandson of Richard Childress, behind the wheel. Joining him with a yellow stripe on the bumper will be 2009 ARCA Re/Max Series champion Justin Lofton. Another rookie to keep an eye on is Parker Kligerman, who will be filling in part-time for Brad Keselowski.

However, a couple of wrinkles could be tossed into our predictions: a number of drivers are not yet certain of their plans - Nelson Piquet Jr, Johnny Benson and Mikey Waltrip. If any of these three secure sufficient funding, they could be a threat to dethrone one of our picks. Aric Almirola was the most consistent driver in the second half of 2009. Will his plans to race a full Sprint Cup Series schedule help or hinder his performance in the truck?

Additionally, truck owners Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick will campaign trucks with multiple drivers. How many wins will they pilfer from the regulars? Will Brian Ickler or Tayler Malsam snag their first victories driving for Busch’s new team? Will the revised pit road rules make for better racing? Will the “Track too Tough to Tame,” just given an August date, have a significant impact on the championship? Will anyone be able to understand Jeff Hensley and Timothy Peters talking “Southern Virginia slang” on the radio? Will Rick Ren need less Tums as a general manger than he did as a crew chief?

I won’t pretend to have those answers but following are our predictions for the points finishing order:

Krista Voda: 1. Crafton 2.Hornaday 3.Bodine 4.Peters 5.Malsam
Adam Alexander: 1.Crafton 2.Hornaday 3. Skinner 4. Sauter 5. Bodine
Phil Parsons: 1.Hornaday 2.Skinner 3.Sauter 4. Bodine 5.Peters
Rick Allen: 1.Hornaday 2.Sauter 3.Skinner 4.Malsam 5. Crafton
Ray Dunlap: 1.Skinner 2.Sauter 3. Peters 4.Hornaday 5. Crafton

Following are the thoughts of the three of us bucking conventional wisdom by not picking Hornaday to repeat:

Voda: “The Thorsport organization is coming off tons of momentum in 2009. They also seem to be the organization with the least amount of off-season moves. That stability just might become their trump card. My head says stick with Hornaday to repeat, but my heart says to go out on a limb. Plus, if Ray can pick Sauter to win the title in ‘09, I can pick his teammate in ‘10.”

Alexander: “Crafton did not show us that he was better than the KHI bunch last year, but if they run as well as they did in 2009, one must think that eventually Hornaday’s team will falter.”

And finally, I believe Skinner will eliminate the 29th-place finishes that have killed his average finish total the past few seasons to give him that extra edge. I know the odds are against me to not pick Hornaday to grab another title, but if I did the same thing everybody else was doing, I would have to eat right and exercise. And we all know I’m not doing that

Ron Hornaday and the Kevin Harvick Inc. organization have become the dominant team in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and unlike many athletes, passing the half-century mark in age doesn’t seem to have slowed the California native at all. Much like his close friend Jimmie Johnson in the Sprint Cup series, if someone plans to dethrone either driver, they are going to have to up the ante.

Had Hornaday not missed clinching the 2008 championship by one position (seven points), we would be calling him a five-time title winner, three of those consecutive. The No. 33 truck won five straight races during the middle of last summer and Big Ron’s career win total stands at an astonishing 45.

However, in my opinion, the 2009 season and Ron Hornaday’s record-setting run at the championship was a bit of an anomaly. The unique landscape of the season better enabled Hornaday and the No. 33 KHI Chevy to dominate in an easier fashion than might have been possible in years past. So many odd factors were at work, such as former Truck Series champion Mike Skinner driving for a new team and new manufacturer, Johnny Benson sidelined due to injury and Ted Musgrave and Jack Sprague’s absence from the driver seat, not to mention the national economic downturn.

Despite the recent string of highly competitive, down-to-the-wire championships in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, I expect the 2010 season to upstage those that preceded it. If things go as planned, look for the upcoming season to be about 40-percent more competitive than 2009.

Following the championship awards banquet, Rick Ren resigned as Hornaday’s crew chief to serve as the director of competition for Kyle Busch Motorsports, a new two-truck operation, leaving a void that theoreticallycould level the playing field against Hornaday. Although a new team, you’d be foolish to count out Busch’s trucks. Furthermore, Skinner has established himself with Randy Moss Motorsports and has a secret weapon in veteran crew chief Gene Nead, newly named to guide the No. 5 team.

I’ve always lauded Ren as an integral part of Hornaday’s success – he didn’t get to be the winningest crew chief in series history by accident. However, Busch’s team has an incredibly daunting task ahead to quickly build and prepare equipment, not to mention their team and its chemistry. Additionally, they’d like to put a third team together for Johnny Benson if sponsorship surfaces, and if they do, that third team would pose an even larger undertaking for the start-up organization. While I consider Ren to be the best in our business, this challenge will test even his resolve, but when the kinks are worked out, look for Kyle Busch Motorsports to give KHI and Hornaday a weekly run for their money.

I look for Skinner to be back in the contender’s saddle every week rubbing fenders with Hornaday. Skinner is a smart, experienced and aggressive driver who won’t give an extra inch on the race track. With Nead calling the shots for Skinner, I anticipate the old school racer to legitimately battle the Longhorn Chevy for the title this season. Nead is all about winning races and letting the points fall where they may, a lethal combination with Skinner’s driving characteristics. Plus, Skinner has a year under his belt at RMM and has developed solid relationships with the crew. Their last-minute swap to Toyota before the 2009 season got underway set them back a bit, but their inventory is established and they now can concentrate on fine-tuning and massaging it.

Nead isn’t the only eye-catching crew chief’s name back in the mix this season. Dan Stillman, who served as Carl Edwards’ Nationwide Series crew chief, and Trip Bruce, Benson’s championship-winning head wrench, have resurfaced atop Truck Series pit boxes for 2010 and promise to be forces to be reckoned with. Red Horse Racing’s acquisition of Jeff Hensley will also be a combination to keep an eye on.

As far as drivers, crew chiefs and owners go, the 2010 season features the most pre-season changes we’ve seen in series history. I think this will only amp up the intensity level on the race track. Adding to this will be NASCAR’s ruling to revert back to the more traditional pit road rules, which permit teams to take both fuel and tires simultaneously during a pit stop. I was fairly vocal last season in my displeasure with the rule that required teams to gamble on taking one or the other,forcing crew chiefs to make moves they otherwise might not have made. I think the reversal of this policy will put us back in the more classic mode of racing and allow teams to do what they do best.

Each season features such unique stories and personalities. The Truck Series’ championship battles have been so stellar nearly every year that it’s almost impossible to compare one edition to another, but I expect we’ll have three or four drivers in serious title contention as we close in on the season finale in Homestead. Only a fool would fail to pick Ron Hornaday as an early favorite to win championship number five. But don’t be surprised to see the dominance he enjoyed in 2009 harder to come by in 2010.

Ron Hornaday Jr.’s loss is Kyle Busch’s gain.

Rick Ren, the crew chief who led Hornaday to two NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championships in three years, has moved over to Kyle Busch Motorsports for 2010, the team’s inaugural year in the Truck Series.

Ren will serve as the director of competition for the two-truck operation. While those outside the sport may have been shocked at Ren’s departure from powerhouse Kevin Harvick Inc., I wasn’t surprised. Busch was one of the very few people or organizations who could have lured him away from KHI.

Ren was instrumental in formulating the successful program that KHI now enjoys and his pairing with Hornaday was excellent. But the chance to be an integral member on the ground floor of building a team for a driver of Busch’s caliber certainly ranks as one of the few scenarios capable of tempting Ren to leave his comfort zone at KHI.

When the rumor of Ren’s departure first began circulating, I wrote out a list of pros and cons regarding the situation and ended up with two more pros than cons. One of the biggest selling points on my sheet, and eventually in Ren’s revelations as well, was his greatly-reduced commute to work at KBM versus KHI. Ren resides in Mooresville, N.C., where KBM will be based. Since the majority of NASCAR teams are stationed in Mooresville while KHI is located in Kernersville, the hour-plus commute to Harvick’s shop has been one of the biggest and most consistent hurdles the team faces in attracting quality employees. When you travel as much as these teams do, distance between home and the office can be a determining factor. But most important to Ren was the opportunity to work with Busch in forming an organization that potentially could be wildly successful, and I think the two together will be a powerful force.

Make no mistake – Busch will not fail in this endeavor. I expect his dedication to this sport and the kind of people who want to be associated with him to make this team a formidable one from the get-go. I anticipate Busch and Ren will put together an operation that will rival or outperform KHI, and you couldn’t ask for anything better than that for the competitive landscape in the Truck Series.

And obviously, if Busch’s group one day will contend with or beat KHI, the impact will be felt within the No. 33 KHI camp to some degree in the early days. But Hornaday is one of the best, if not the best, Truck Series drivers of all time and has succeeded with nearly everyone with whom he has been paired. The equipment at KHI is top-notch and I have no reasonto think that newly-tabbed crew chief Dave Fuge won’t mesh well with Hornaday next year.

But will Hornaday be as dominant as he was in 2009? That’s a big question mark in my book. The team is changing engine suppliers and crew chiefs and also lost their truck chief to another team, so reorganization is the name of the game at KHI during the off-season. It will take a lot of work for Hornaday and Fuge to establish solid communication right off the bat and dominate in the fashion Hornaday did in 2009.

But Hornaday’s crew isn’t the only one with a mountain to climb. Busch and his newly-established team have an incredible amount of work ahead of them in the coming months. They are in the process of building a new shop and will be working out of the old Xpress Motorsports shop until it’s complete. The 2010 Truck Series’ schedule will play into their favor, though, in the early part of the year, as we race only three times within seven weeks beginning at Daytona before getting into a more regular rhythm. This is a deviation from years past when we went from Daytona to Fontana and it will be a much-welcomed few weeks off for this fledgling team to build equipment, work out logistics and establish communication.

The biggest challenge in team management is putting the right people in place because everyone knows NASCAR is a people business as much as it is a racing business. And Kyle Busch has scored big with his first move in hiring Rick Ren.