KHIEL GETS A NEW CHANCE, MOODY GETS A NEW TEAM IN PASS

It’s been no secret in New England racing this winter that Moody was looking to step up his program for 2006. Several names were run through the rumor mill about who would get to drive for the team in a schedule of 10-12 events. Khiel heard the rumors and didn’t think that he would have a chance at the seat.

“I heard some of the names that they were thinking about putting in the car – guys like Ted Christopher and Brad Leighton and I didn’t even expect to get a phone call back after that. Steve called me back a couple of times and I still didn’t think that much about it until he called and said that he talked to Rick and that I was the one that they were leaning towards.”

Early this week, the good news came.

“Rick called me later on that night and he asked me a few questions,” said Khiel. “We talked for a little bit and he said that he wanted me in the car, so we set a date to meet on Monday morning. We met with Rick, Steve, Scott Pullen and decided that this was what we were going to do.”

“We selected Travis to drive for us,” said Moody. “I had about 10 or 11 drivers contact us in the past few months and we had a couple of Busch drivers that we talked to. But you like a young gun like him who is hungry and has driven before on the tour. It was kind of a hard decision there were a couple of good veterans that we thought about.”

You might think that taking a year off from driving would kill a young racer’s career. Instead, it might have made Khiel more attractive and taught him quite a bit about winning at the same time.

stepped into that role after parking his family-owned car before the season. He was long on talent and short on funds. Moody saw that and signed the young driver – even though the two were perfect strangers not too long ago.

“I talked to him for the first time last Thursday night,” said Khiel. “I just found out that this deal might happen last week. I talked to Steve Perry about a month ago because I heard that he and Rick [Moody] might be doing a second team. I knew that it wouldn’t hurt to just call and let them know that I wanted to get back in the car again and that I was interested in a deal like that.”

The “new” Moody team will be based out of the same shops as SP2. Shock wizard Caesar Morgan will be the team’s crew chief and will work alongside the SP2 brain trust of Seth Holbrook and Buster Bean.

“It’s a good opportunity for us to team up with a good team like SP2. We just want to be competitive every time that we go to the races. It’s not that we haven’t been, but you can see how they run every time that they come out of the shop. They have a good veteran driver in Mike Rowe and we talked after the season was over last year and we finally just put the agreement together.”

“I think that the biggest thing is that I will be able to focus on driving and that is something that I wasn’t able to do in all of my other years of racing. We had pretty much a family run team and everyone on the crew were friends of mine. It was hard to prepare and get focused to drive when I had to worry about making changes to the car. I did my own tires back when I was driving before.”

Not being in the racecar wasn’t an easy thing to do though – and Khiel is glad to have that behind him now.

“It was hard having the year off last year and I’m ready to get back into the car and start driving again,” said Khiel.

Moody finished sixth in the IBG-PASS Pro Stock points in 2005 with Donnie Whitten behind the wheel. It was a good season for the then-#83 team, but Moody has been around the sport for a long time. He wanted to do better and now he is stepping up to make that happen for 2006 and beyond by borrowing a few ingredients from the teams that finished first and second in the standings last season.

Partnering up with the SP2 Motorsports team of owners Scott Pullen and Steve Perry was step number one. The duo fields cars for Mike Rowe and had five victories to their credit in 2005. Coming up with a new driver was a easy as looking towards the championship team of Ben Rowe. Their tire specialist, 23-year-old Travis Khiel

“He’s been working on the championship team and somebody put his name out there,” said Moody. “We all sat around and talked about all of the different drivers and we decided that Travis could do us right and do a good job.”

“It probably does help me now,” said Khiel. “It’s not really so much the set-ups. I was hoping to learn a lot more about that, but doing tires is a big job and a lot of times when they were discussing what the car was doing and what changes to make, I would be working on the tires. I didn’t learn a lot about changes to make. But seeing the preparation to see what it takes to run well like they do, I learned a lot about that. Just knowing the way that they operate will help me for sure.

"SP2 Motorsports would like to welcome Richard Moody of Richard Moody Racing, and Travis Khiel to our racing family,” said Scott Pullen, co-owner of SP2 Motorsports. “Richard is an excellent car owner who has stepped up to provide the best possible equipment and support for a racing team. Travis is multi-talented as a driver and crew personnel and will be a great addition for RMR and SP2."

“They’ve got a good crew and a lot of guys with experience, so I should be able to focus on just driving,” said Khiel. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime for me. It is something that I always wanted. I’ve looked at these guys like Ben and Mike and saw what they could do with a good crew. I always wanted to get hooked up with someone who is really into racing and now I’ve done that..”

The bittersweet part of the change has been that with the

new incarnation of Richard Moody Racing, Whitten and the team has parted ways. Moody is thankful for Whitten’s contributions to the team and wishes him the best in the future.

“I helped Donny on his car for a year or a year and a half and then he drove for us for two years,” said Moody. “It was tough. It’s tough when you don’t have a full-time team like SP2 has. They did a good job and Donny did a nice job driving. I like Donny, but at the end of the year I thought it was time to pick the team up and see what could happen.”

The Moody team will use the #44 for their racecars this season, that is the same number that Moody used while campaigning a car for Jeff Stevens on the old ACT Pro Stock Tour in the 19080’s. The team plans to run a limited schedule of approximately 10-12 events and hopes to expand in the future.