Team turmoil leaves rookie driver without a truck to race

Three weeks after Justin Johnson qualified third for his best effort as a rookie driver in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, he was left without a race truck to drive on Friday.

The 25-year-old from Las Vegas was affected by major cutbacks this week at Vision Aviation Racing and was not entered in the race at Dover, Del.

Team manager Tom Davis said Thursday team owners decided this week to make substantial cutbacks that included laying off 10 employees and scaling back to one part-time team. It is uncertain how many more races Johnson and teammate Dusty Davis, 18, also of Las Vegas, will enter this year.

In early January, the team expanded its original part-time plans by committing to run Johnson in 22 of the 23 races and Davis in about seven.

Johnson was replaced this week by Chris Fontaine and some reports put former Formula One champion Kimi Raikkonen in a Vision truck for the May 20 race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

"We'll put some drivers in our truck at high profile races like we did when we put Michael Waltrip in the (No.) 51 at Daytona," Davis said.

Waltrip, who won the Daytona opener, was hired because Johnson and Davis were not approved to run on the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

Johnson and Davis competed in their first truck races the following week at Phoenix International Raceway and placed eighth and 26th, respectively.

In Johnson's last truck race, he qualified third and finished 15th. He has driven the No. 51 truck in four of five races and ranks 25th in points.

"Justin and Dusty will get in some (truck) races at some time this year," Davis said.

"We're fortunate to have good owners with good business acumen that realized we had to slow up and be prepared for the long haul," said Davis, a former Las Vegas radio executive and father of Dusty, who has competed in three truck races this year for Vision.

The team, funded by the owners of Vision Aviation, plan to continue developing the team.

"Bottom line is we're going back to our original plan," Davis said. "We're about the future so we had to slow up a bit and get caught up (financially).

"It's the ebb and flow of the first year racing in the big leagues."

Davis said Vision chief operating officer Steven Acor, who lives in Las Vegas, decided to scale back the racing operation to compensate for the increased cost of aviation fuel and expansion plans for Vision Airlines, which has one of its four national offices in Las Vegas.

The team was started in Las Vegas three years ago and competed in Super Late Models stock cars at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and last year raced at Toyota Speedway in Irwindale, Calif., where Johnson won the season championship and Davis was runner up.

The team relocated from Las Vegas to near Charlotte, N.C., at the end of last year with intentions to field trucks part time for Johnson and Davis.

The Vision team invested in new shop equipment, new trucks and transporters from Billy Ballew Motorsports.

Contact reporter Jeff Wolf at jwolf@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0247.