Starr Survives for Fourteenth at Loudon

David Starr survived a spin just before the midpoint of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series F. W. Webb 175 to finish fourteenth Saturday afternoon in the ASI Limited/Zachry Toyota at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

In the morning qualifying session, David qualified the No. 81 sixteenth on the flat one-mile track posting a lap of 29.74 seconds at 128.06 mph putting the ASI Limited/Zachry Toyota on the outside of the eighth row at the start of the 175-lap race.

The action started even before the field came to the starting line as the outside lane had troubles getting up to speed causing an accordion of trucks. David was the sandwich in the middle getting caught between Cole Whitt and Johnny Sauter ahead of him. The contact at start of the race damaged the nose of Starr’s Toyota but David held on to the sixteenth position.

“It’s just bad luck. We put a hole in the front of the truck at the start; they jammed-up and I hit the 13 truck and put a hole in the nose and then the truck was really aero tight.” Starr said.

There was very little passing through the first third of the race as Kyle Busch set a torrid pace pulling away from everyone except for Austin Dillon. David held the sixteenth position and was able to stay on the lead lap until Busch caught him on lap 50. The first caution would fly on lap 60 for debris with Busch lapping all but the top-thirteen trucks.

David would restart fifteenth as the first truck one lap down and was fortunate enough to earn the “lucky dog” award on the second caution, which was also for debris on lap 71 putting David back on the lead lap at the tail of the longest line.

As happens often on restarts, the traffic can get bunched up and David was caught behind several trucks that made contact on lap 75. As he checked-up to avoid the mess in front of him he was hit from behind by another truck and the contact sent the ASI Limited/Zachry Toyota sliding sideways through the corner. Using his years of experience David would turn into the spin and prevent the truck from spinning completely around and he continued back on the track.

However the long spin on the track left Starr over a half a lap behind the leaders and by lap 100 Busch would again catch the SS Green Light Racing entry putting David a lap down again.

“When the first caution finally came out we were a lap down because Kyle Busch was so fast. After some awesome pit stops by the team making repairs to the front and with some adjustments the truck came alive. It was really fast and then we got the lucky dog.” David explained. “But unfortunately then you have to start in the back, behind everybody and one of the trucks that was not even on the lead lap spun me out and we just kind of battled from that point on. The tires were flat spotted but we didn’t catch another caution. Finally when we were able to put two right sides on it our ASI Limited/Zachry Toyota was fast.”

The race would go green over the laps one hundred laps with rare green flag stops for all the NCWTS teams.  Busch would continue to dominate over the last half of the race lapping all but six trucks through the green flag run. Busch’s Toyota led 165 of the 175 laps while winning his sixth NCWTS race of 2011.

“If we did not have that bad luck, I believe we would have finished in the top-ten, we had a pretty good truck.”

“The team did a great job, it was just unfortunate that we had some more bad luck. We need to get this luck behind us to get the finishes we need to get into that top-ten at the end of the season,” Starr concluded. “The team did a great job, everyone did a great job it’s just unfortunate the circumstances took us out of the race.”

Starr gained one spot in the NCWTS driver’s standings, back up to eleventh behind new points leader Austin Dillon.  He is 45 points behind Todd Bodine for the tenth spot.

SS Green Light Racing PR