KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? Veteran driver Ted Musgrave couldn’t resist the chance to tease young teammate Jason Leffler on Friday in the Kansas Speedway media center.

As Musgrave passed Leffler on his walk away from the podium, the former stopped and quickly turned around the blue baseball cap atop the latter’s head.

Leffler hopes the seemingly inconsequential moment will serve as nothing more than a symbolic reminder of how quickly things can change in truck racing.

He’s already seen how a pole victory at the Speedway can flip-flop into a 28th place finish, which happened last year when Leffler won the inaugural Winston Cup pole at the Speedway.

“I took a lot of mental notes from last year, and they came back to me on the first lap out on the track today,” said the 26-year-old driver in his first year on the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

Maybe Leffler can use whatever Cliff’s Note he had on Friday  when he won the pole for today’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 250 with a speed of 165.812 mph  to boost him to his first ever Craftsman Truck win.

“I knew we had a chance for the pole coming here,” Leffler said. “But having a chance and getting it done are different things.”

The problem hasn’t been the poles. He’s been the fastest qualifier in half of the 10 races he’s driven. Thing is, when it comes to driving down Victory Lane, Leffler instead finds himself on pit road looking for reasons for what went wrong.

“I’ve made a couple of mistakes this year, trying to push too hard for a victory when I probably should have just let it come to me,” said the Long Beach, Calif., resident. “That’s my new approach. We did that last weekend and we almost pulled off the win.”

Leffler indeed has been close.

He’s knocked on the door several times as his six top-10 finishes attest. He’s even poked a couple holes through the wood, coming just short in his three runner-up efforts  including May’s race at Pikes Peak where he won the pole before having to settle for second on race day.

“I’m having a great time here in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series,” said Leffler, who currently sits fifth in the points race with 1,293 points, chasing his Ultra Motorsports buddy Musgrave  who leads the league’s championship battle with 1378 points.

Leffler tries to pick up tips from his experienced teammate, but it was Musgrave searching for answers Friday.

“He didn’t share anything with me today,” Musgrave joked. “We do the same thing teammates always try to do. It doesn’t matter if it’s the crew chief, the team or whatever group of guys that you’re with. As long as they keep sharing information, it’s going to make both of us stronger.”

But Leffler’s always been a strong racer, even in his early days of midget racing.

Leffler went on to become the first driver in 37 years to capture three consecutive USAC National Midget titles. Today he’ll try to finally catch that elusive inaugural truck win.

“We’re having a great year,” Leffler said with a smile that hid under the bill of his properly adjusted cap. “We’re still trying to get our first win. Â We’ve had a successful season so far with three second-place finishes and being really close, so eventually the first victory is going to come.”

Then he can flip his hat all right  into a crowd of about 80,000 screaming fans.