It all started for Mike Skinner back in 1986, the year he made his Winston Cup debut for a small organization known as Zanworth Racing. He raced three races that season, making his debut at Martinsville. Skinner never finished on the lead lap, never finished higher than 22nd, yet a career was born.

Toyota

Mike Skinner

Driving safe

Mike Skinner was recently in Phoenix to help with the Toyota Driving Expectations. A program from Toyota for teens and their parents, educating them about driving and road safety through a unique combination of interactive hands-on sessions and simulated defensive driving exercises.

"I think any parent that gets the chance to take their teenager to do this and any teenager that gets the chance to take their parents to do this is definitely a worthwhile cause and a lot can come out of it," Skinner said.

"The kids and parents go through the same course and at the end of the day they talk again and it teaches the parents and kids alike how to focus and how to stay on the top of your game when you're behind the wheel of a car.

"Seeing the parents and the teens interact, I was pretty amazed, I've been impressed with it. It's a great cause and I honestly think it will definitely save lives."

• Toyota Driving Expectations

It took nine years for Skinner to finally earn that full-time ride in NASCAR, except it wasn't with the premier Cup Series, it was with NASCAR's new Truck Series in a vehicle funded by Richard Childress Racing.

That first season, Skinner won eight races, finished in the top 10 in 18 of the season's 20 events and won the inaugural championship. The following season left him with eight more wins and a third-place finish in the points standings behind champion Ron Hornaday.

Fast forward 13 years, seven relatively disappointing seasons in the Cup Series which saw some promising runs but no wins, and Skinner is back on top, battling for a championship against -- you guessed it, Hornaday.

Fourteen points is all that separates the two drivers with five races left in the '07 season, and while Skinner appreciates how exciting this points battle is with his long-time Truck Series nemesis, he would rather have his second title wrapped up by now.

"I'd just assume it not be a battle," Skinner said with a laugh. "I'd love to have about a 160-point lead like we had earlier in the season with five to go but instead we are down 14.

"Ronnie and I go back a long way, we're kinda like the sheep dog and the coyote ... when we go to work in the morning we're at each others throat and we're not really good friends. We're rivals and we do everything we can to beat the other one. But when the whistle blows and the race is over, you might find us out there in each other's motorcoach talking about it.

"If I can't have this [championship], if the 5 team can't have it this year, it's well deserved for Ronnie to have. He's been awfully lucky and very good."

Through 13 races this season, it looked like Skinner was in cruise control for his second Truck Series title. He just won his fourth race on the season at Kentucky, finished no worse than eighth, started on the pole seven times -- including a stretch of six in a row -- and had a 164-point lead in the points standings.

Interestingly, it was Skinner's 35th-place finish in last year's final race that led to his dominating '07 season.

"When we left Homestead last year after I crashed one of the best trucks I'd ever had in my whole career being a little impatient, I had to go home and I had to live with that all winter," Skinner said. "I hate points racing; I don't care nothing about points. I just want to go race and win races and run up front and have a good time in the twilight years of my career. That was my goal and that's the way it's been.

"After [Homestead], I said I owe it to this race team to give them a year or two of trying to just be conservative and taking top-10s when that's all we can get and top-fives and heck we won three of the first four races so I thought, gosh almighty this seems to work real good."

But there is a reason you don't crown champions at the midway point. Luck has as much to do with winning a title as driving, something not lost on Skinner.

"I was talking to Ron the other day ... it [comes down to] bad luck. We are both competitive on the racetrack," Skinner said. "[At Talladega], I was up by 40 or 50 points and the hood pins broke. I mean a 6-cent bolt broke; now we are 14 points behind. So if it comes down to a 14-point shootout and I lose because of that, I'll shake my fist in the air and do whatever you do but regardless of whatever happens we've had an awesome Toyota Tundra this year and Bill and Gail Davis have put me in equipment capable of winning races and running up front."

There's running up front -- and then there is Skinner's way.

When it comes to leading a race, no one does it as well as Skinner. So far this season he has led a lap in 19 of the 20 races run. But that's nothing. Going back to last year, he led a lap in 19 consecutive races, a Truck Series record. He holds the record for poles in a season, 10, which he set in 1995. With nine poles on the year and five races to go, it's almost a certainty he will at least match that. He's third all-time in the Truck Series in number of laps led and he has more poles than anyone with 38. So what's his secret?

"I scare the hell out of myself every week," he said. "I don't know the answer. I seem to be able to find the maximum grip for one lap and sometimes I cross that line and like I said, I scare the heck out of myself and when it works we're fortunate enough to get a pole so I'm not gonna change anything."

And it doesn't look like the apple falls far from the tree.

A proud father of two sons, it looks like Skinner's racing DNA has made it to his youngest son, Dustin. The 22-year-old has found success behind the wheel in the FASCAR series and recently drove dad's truck in a test session down in Florida. The results were eye-opening.

"I've tested with a lot of rookies with Bill Davis Racing and back when the Toyotas first came out and it goes back a lot further than that and I've never really had a rookie run as fast I have in a truck -- Dustin was the first," Skinner said. "He got in that truck and it was actually our backup truck and he ran laps just as fast as I was running. He did a great job and the second day [crew chief] Jeff Hensley just took him and they spent a couple hours and Jeff threw a lot of things at him. Dustin handled it really well. I think he's matured a lot since The Gong Show with Jack Roush."

So does this mean we could be seeing yet another father-son duo on a racetrack next year?

"I hope so. We are gonna try to run a couple of events," Skinner said proudly. "We're working on it, we're talking to Toyota right now and talking to sponsors and some race teams. I'd love for Bill Davis Racing to look at him. I don't know if they have him in their sights or not but if they don't, they'll be plenty of people who will take somebody that fast and that young. He's good looking, does good interviews -- he does a good job.

"We're gonna try to seek some sponsorship and maybe one day when I hang that steering wheel up he can pick it up and keep it going."

Hang that steering wheel up? This is a man at the top of his game; retirement should be the furthest thing from his mind.

But Skinner did turn 50 this year, and time is running out on his racing career, which begs the question: Is he looking at a return to the Cup Series? It didn't work out well for him the first time -- but times have changed, and he's wiser, both in and out of the racecar.

"I'd like to run a limited [Cup] program, maybe five or six races, maybe a few Busch races, I don't know. Basically to keep your foot in it and keep up with what's going on," Skinner said. "The COT car I think is a cool deal, I'd like to run some races in it. It keeps you going, it supplements your income a little bit. The Truck Series doesn't pay very good, and so it'd be neat to run a handful of races and to do it in a Toyota. I'd love to do it in a Camry but I wouldn't trade my Tundra for it. I'm enjoying this. I'm gonna do this a couple more years, see how I feel and go from there."

For now Skinner is under contract with Bill Davis Racing through the 2009 season. He'll be 53 years old when it runs out and will be one of the most successful drivers in Craftsman Truck Series history. If he were to leave, he would leave at the pinnacle of his career.

But as we've seen with numerous drivers, walking away isn't the easiest thing to do. Though to Skinner's credit, he says he doesn't want to hang on forever.

"I wouldn't say I'm riding it out as long as it will go because I think when you get to that point, you find yourself riding in the back," he said. "So as long as I can get it done and I feel good, I'll probably do it.

"We've got two more years on our agreement now and at the end of '08 we will start discussions on whether were gonna go further, but I'm not gonna do what several of these guys have done and do a retirement and come back the next year.

"When I quit ... I don't know if I'll ever quit, I just might just cut way back, how's that?"

Sounds like Mike Skinner plans on getting it done for a while.