Notebook: Carrier named crew chief for Piquet in truck series

Notebook: Carrier named crew chief for Piquet in truck series


Chris Carrier has been named crew chief for Nelson Piquet Jr.'s Camping World Truck Series entry, Kevin Harvick Inc. announced Monday.
Carrier has more than 30 years experience in NASCAR, having won in Cup, Nationwide and the truck series.
“I’m really looking forward to this experience with Nelson Piquet Jr.,” Carrier said. “I enjoy working with young drivers, and I have a lot of respect for Nelson. (With him) coming from Formula One, I know that he has a lot of talent, he has good car control, and he won’t be afraid to go fast. I’m excited to get started.”
KHI fielded two trucks in 2010, with four-time series champ Ron Hornaday Jr. in the team’s No. 33 Chevrolet and a variety of drivers making starts in the No. 2 entry. Piquet will drive the No. 8 Chevrolet.
Carrier earned a Cup win with driver Joe Nemechek and Andy Petree Racing at Rockingham in 2001. He has multiple wins as a crew chief in the Nationwide Series and won in the truck series with Tony Stewart and APR at Richmond in 2003.
Carrier, 50, most recently headed up Penske Racing’s driver development program with Parker Kligerman.
Suspended crew member reinstatedNASCAR has reinstated crew member Paul Chodora upon his successful completion of NASCAR’s Road to Recovery Program following his February 2009 suspension for violating the sanctioning body’s substance abuse policy.
Chodora was a crewman for Mayfield Motorsports and the first crewman suspended under NASCAR’s new random drug-testing policy instituted that season.

France, teams to meet in coming weeks
NASCAR executives, including chairman Brian France, will meet with team owners, drivers and key team officials over the next several weeks to talk about significant issues facing the sport.
The meetings will be done by team organization instead of during one big meeting with all Cup or Nationwide teams, NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston confirmed.
Over the past couple of years, NASCAR has increased its use of “town hall” style meetings to discuss potential changes to the sport. Last year, it opted for smaller team forums by meeting separately with each organization.
The meetings are designed to get feedback and help NASCAR officials make decisions.
“The old theory was that when you’re at the races with them all the time, we had the communication lines wide open,” France said about the team forums last January. “That’s true, but it’s too busy now to assume that we can have all the communications and get all the issues they want to get resolved with us at the track.
“So we just changed it around where we’re having these meetings. … In the town hall meetings, a lot of people didn’t want to speak up when there were 12 other drivers or something like that and they didn’t feel comfortable.”
NASCAR typically does not make public what it plans to discuss with the teams. But last summer, executives of several teams met separately from NASCAR to talk about potential solutions to cost containment issues such as the number of people that travel on race weekends and the current ban on testing at tracks that have NASCAR national touring series events.
Special to the Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service