What? Ron Hornaday Jr. retire?

Say it isn’t so champ.

Last Friday prior to the race at Iowa Speedway, Ron Hornaday Jr. said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that if he could no longer win races he “would probably retire early”.

His comments were somewhat surprising considering that Hornaday was fifth in the point standings after just eight races.

Certainly, after two decades competing in NASCAR’s top three series, Hornaday has nothing left to prove.

The four-time champion has called the truck series home for 15 of the last 20 seasons since the tour debuted in 1995. He’s produced 51 wins, 155 top-five’s and 230 top 10 finishes in 353 truck starts. Hornaday has four wins in Nationwide and even a top 10 finish at the Cup level.

But It’s been since 2011 since Hornaday last visited Victory Lane when he campaigned Chevys with the now defunct Kevin Harvick Inc. And the last two seasons with start-up teams have not been kind.

At the end of last season, Hornaday latched onto Turner Scott Motorsports – an organization that has earned 11 truck wins and a title in the last six seasons. One week before the 2014 truck season began TSM announced that Hornaday would compete with a third team alongside Ben Kennedy and Ryan Truex at Daytona International Speedway. He finished fifth.

Over the next seven races, TSM attempted to acclimate to the new rules in the truck series while other teams – particularly the Toyota contingent that has won every race this year – hit on the right combination early. Despite two top-five finishes and six top 10s in the first eight races, Hornaday felt there was room for improvement. Although he turned 56 last month, Hornaday shows no signs of slowing down.

He addressed his concerns with his team prior to last week’s race at Iowa.

“I’m really optimistic,” Hornaday said. “I’m putting my foot down. I’m not doing this to go run third to fifth. I want to win races. I can go out there and ride around with the best of them but I don’t want to ride around. I want to start winning races and if I don’t, I’m probably going to retire early and I don’t want to retire. I’m still having fun doing it.

“I want to run this year and next year but I don’t want to run the way we’ve been running. So we’re really looking into the focus of what we’re doing in the truck stuff at Turner. But we definitely have to start running better.”