Ron Hornaday Jr.

Ronald Lee Hornaday Jr. (born June 20, 1958) is an American former professional stock car racing driver and businessman. He currently owns Team Hornaday Development, a driver development program, as well as Hornaday Race Cars, a Dirt Modified chassis builder. He is also the father of former NASCAR driver Ronnie Hornaday and son of the late Ron Hornaday Sr., a two-time NASCAR Winston West Series Champion. Hornaday himself is a four-time champion in the NASCAR Truck Series, his most recent coming in 2009 and is a NASCAR Featherlite Southwest Tour Champion. He was noticed by Dale Earnhardt while participating in the NASCAR Winter Heat on TNN.

Hornaday was born in Palmdale, California, and began racing in go-karts and motorcycles early in his career. Eventually, he moved up to race stock cars at Saugus Speedway. In 1992, he won his first championship in the Southwest Series as well as winning the Most Popular Driver award. He won the Southwest championship the next year as well, becoming the only driver to do so in series history until Jim Pettit won back-to-back titles in 2004–2005. Pettit won the title again in 2011 in the SRL Southwest Tour Series.^{[citation needed]}

Hornaday made his Winston Cup debut in 1992 at the Save Mart 300K, where he started seventeenth but finished 32nd in Bob Fisher's No. 92 Chevrolet. He made another start later that year at Phoenix International Raceway, where he finished 25th. He ran at Phoenix the next year as well, finishing 22nd in the No. 76 Spears Motorsports car.^{[citation needed]}

Hornaday signed to drive the No. 16 RCCA Products / Papa John's Pizza Chevrolet C/K owned by Dale Earnhardt, Inc. for the then-start-up Super Truck Series. In the first season of competition, Hornaday won six races and four poles on his way to a third place points finish. The next year, with sponsorship from NAPA Auto Parts, Hornaday won four races and the series championship.

In 1997, despite seven wins, two of which came by leading every lap in the race, he finished fifth in points. He was able to reclaim his title in 1998 by garnering six wins and sixteen top-fives out of 27 races. At Memphis 200 he celebrated with a burnout, which was unusual at the time, and made team owner Dale Earnhardt angry for risking damaging the powertrain.

Also in 1998, Hornaday made his Busch Series debut, driving four races for ST Motorsports, his best finish an eighth at Pikes Peak International Raceway. He also debuted a Winston Cup car for Tim Beverly at Sonoma, finishing fourteenth in the No. 17 NAPA Chevy. Hornaday came close to a truck victory at Watkins Glen in the 1998 Parts America 150 in which he led all but twelve laps, only to lose the race due to a final-lap penalty for jumping the restart; Hornaday would pull into victory lane post-race only to be told that he had in fact finished fourth.

In 1999, Hornaday won the one-hundredth race ran in NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series history at the Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Washington. He was one of four drivers entered in the race that competed in every truck race since its inception at the time for an extra $100,000 if he won, which he did. However, he was unable to capitalize on it and win the championship, finishing seventh in the final standings after an up and down year. Fortunately, he was given an opportunity late in the year to replace Dale Earnhardt Jr. in driving the No. 3 NAPA Chevy for DEI's Busch program with Earnhardt moving up to the Cup Series, and he announced that he would do so the following year.

Hornaday began racing full-time in the Busch Series in 2000. He picked up wins at Nazareth Speedway and Indianapolis Raceway Park and finished fifth in points, runner-up to Kevin Harvick for Rookie of the Year honors. He was also voted Most Popular Driver. However, Earnhardt elected to move Hornaday's team up to the Cup Series in 2001 and hire Michael Waltrip to drive the car, and Hornaday was released.