Key Motorsports names Hooper No. 40 crew chief

MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- In a bold move to try and improve the performance of his Truck Series trucks and team, owner Curtis W. Key has announced that 1996 Winston West champion and veteran crew chief Lance Hooper has been hired as crew chief for Key Motorsports.

Hooper succeeds veteran Gary Showalter, who held the crew chief position at Key Motorsports for the team's No. 40 Chevrolet since May 2007.

"Our performances have not been where I had hoped they would be at this time, and I know that I have better equipment than what we have shown to this point in the 2008 season," Key said. "When a team struggles, changes can be made in various areas in an effort to get better. I just felt that at this stage of the season, and after evaluating everything, that we needed someone different to oversee our truck racing program, so I have brought Lance back."

Hooper had been crew chief for the No. 13 ThorSport Racing team before being released just before the Martinsville race late last month.

After starting every race in 2007 for the first time in two, full-time campaigns, posting three top-10 and six top-20 finishes in 25 races and finishing 28th in owner's points to guarantee the No. 40 a starting berth for the first four races this season, things have not gone as expected.

Chad Chaffin, hired by Key to drive the final eight races of 2007 in yet another attempt to make the team better and who in the process scored the two best finishes ever for a Key Motorsports truck with a seventh at Martinsville and eighth at Talladega last fall, was back behind the wheel of the No. 40 to start this season. The performances just have not been there, however, thus prompting the change.

"We made changes to our trucks and bodies, worked very hard to try and improve our engine program and then kept Chad as our driver through the winter to give us some continuity and momentum after finishing the year on the plus side," Key said of the team's offseason.

However, Chaffin got caught up in a big wreck not of his choosing in the season-opener in Daytona and finished last, and though the finishes the next three races showed slight improvement, Key still was not happy to see his truck running in the back of the pack.

"I haven't spent all the money I have spent over the last four years to run where we have been running, and after seeing how we performed as a group in Martinsville [Chaffin finished 22nd but on the lead lap for the first time in four races], I knew that we had to do something big," Key said. "Changing drivers was one option I had, but when we found some things that we were lacking in our trucks, I felt it was our leadership at the top that had to be altered and I decided to bring Lance back to try and get us straightened out."

Lance Hooper

Having worked closely with Chevrolet engineers for the past two years, Hooper's knowledge of the set-ups for the Chevrolets has expanded to the point that when he was retained by Key recently as a consultant he uncovered some major flaws in the majority of Key's 10-truck race fleet. The technology experience that Hooper now possesses is what ultimately convinced Key to make the permanent change and hire Lance full-time, and changes to the trucks are under way.

"Lance left my team for ThorSport early in the 2006 season, and to be honest, that had been one factor that kept me from hiring him sooner," Key said. "But when I saw all of the things that he had learned over the last two seasons and then discovered what he had found in our trucks and what we needed to do to improve them, it became an easier decision to make.

"Gary did a good job for me over the last 11 months, and I really appreciate what he and our director of competition, Tommy Morgan, did to help rescue this team when we really needed it -- right at the start of a string of seven consecutive weekends of racing. But it is quite evident now that we have been racing with some deficiencies that had gone unnoticed, so we needed Lance's help now and not later."

Morgan will remain in his current position with the team and will serve as the crew chief of Key's No. 31 Chevrolet that will begin Nationwide Series competition at Richmond on May 2. Jeff Green will drive as Key returns to the series he competed in for six seasons in the 1990s but after a 10-year hiatus.

A highlight to Hooper's tenure at ThorSport was Willie Allen's drive to the 2007 rookie of the year title in the Truck Series and a 21st place finish in owner points.

Hooper sees some good things in a much different Key Motorsports program than what he had worked with late in 2005 and for selected races in the 2006 season, the first full season of competition for a Key Motorsports Truck Series team.

"It's good to be back, but we have a lot of work ahead of us," Hooper said. "When I last worked with Curtis, we had half the trucks, half the motors and half the work shop, so he has really spent a lot of money and effort to improve the infrastructure. The changes we are making to the trucks were definitely needed in an attempt to make them more competitive.

"Improvement will come over time, but Curtis does have the equipment to get the job done. We'll take each race one at a time to make sure that we have made the right changes and to tweak them as needed. I'm excited about the challenge here and the opportunity for me to continue doing what I have done since I last worked here, and that is to learn."

The first race for the Hooper-led No. 40 Chevrolet will be the Truck Series event at Kansas Speedway on Saturday, April 26.