Following the fifth race of the 2005 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series campaign Orleans Racing has begun a reorganization of key personnel. The changes involved the crew chief and truck chief of the #77 Jasper Engines Dodge. Effective immediately Orleans Racing has announced the departure of crew chief, Billy Wilburn and truck chief, Travis Sharpe. No replacements for the two have been named. “Billy Wilburn is from the east coast,” said team co-owner and driver, Brendan Gaughan. “It was a long way away for him to go to come out here and he really wants to be a Nextel Cup crew chief. So we sat down right before the St. Louis race and it was an amicable decision. It wasn’t anything where I was mad at him for non-performance or he was made at me as a driver,” Gaughan added. “It was personal reasons and he wanted to get back home and take care of some things. So we left on great terms and we went out with a great race, too.” Thanking Wilburn for his contributions, Gaughan offered, “The Orleans Racing team has been working really hard since I came back and trying to get us better race trucks, brand new race trucks. We brought Billy Wilburn in to help clean our shop up and get things dialed in. It was fantastic having Billy Wilburn there because what happened was it let Charlie Wilson get back to the work of crew chiefing. Billy Wilburn came in and started basically cleaning all the pieces and parts up.” Managing Orleans Racing’s technical arm will be Charlie Wilson. Wilson, who has one win already in the 2005 season with driver, #62-Steve Park has the full confidence of Gaughan to continue the reformation of Orleans Racing. Wilson has already taken several steps that should help the performance of both the #62 The Orleans Dodge and the #77 Jasper Engines Dodge. “We just got some great results from the wind tunnel,” notes Gaughan on Wilson’s first assignment. “We found out some big, huge things that the Orleans team was missing. That’s thanks to Dodge for opening up their wind tunnel time. That’s why we’re part of their program. We found huge mistakes on our part that we’re fixing.”(Orleans Racing)(5-4-2005)
