The NASCAR Camping World Truck Series celebrated its 400th race; David Starr and the SS Green Light Racing team spent the entire weekend at the Kansas Speedway working to improve the handling of the No. 81 Zachry Toyota. Despite the efforts and hard work of the team, the end result was a disheartening sixteenth place finish in the NCWTS O’Reilly Auto Parts 250.
In the two Friday afternoon practice sessions, the team repeatedly adjusted the set-up to help David accelerate off the corners, but the changes were not enough to push the No. 81 up to the top of the time charts.
David qualified the Zachry Tundra twenty-second in the Saturday morning session with a lap of 32.81 seconds on the mile and one half tri-oval speedway at 164.55 mph giving him the outside of the eleventh row starting position.
Throughout the 167-lap race David would work hard to gain positions in the 36-truck field making it into the top ten for a while mid-race. At nearly every opportunity the team took advantage of the caution flags to make adjustments to Starr’s Toyota to allow David to get back into the gas. All told, Crew Chief Jason Miller called Starr to the pits on six occasions directing the SS Green Light team to make adjustments to help David find the handle of the Zachry Toyota.
Showing great patience and experience, David narrowly missed a spinning Brad Sweet on lap 67 following a restart after the second caution.
When the checkered flag flew for Sprint Cup regular Clint Bowyer, Starr was sixteenth in the running order, an improvement of six places from his starting position.
“It was one of those weeks when you don’t have the speed that we expected,” said Starr. “It was just really, really tight from the center-off the corner. The guys on the SS Green Light team worked hard all day, in-fact, all weekend to get our Toyota to handle better, but we just could not get it good enough.”
“The guys were able to make improvements, but we just could not improve it enough to get up to the front of the field,” Starr continued. “These trucks are so sensitive if you are off by the smallest amount it can affect the handling. I’m proud of the guys, they worked really hard and we just cam up a little short. This team does not give up.”
“We’re going to change to a little different set-up for Texas next week, it’s one that we have run earlier in the year and I think this will be a little better combination and help us find some of the speed we had in the beginning of the season.”
Starr sits fourteenth in the 2011 NCWTS drivers point standings after eight of twenty-five races, although he is only nine points out of tenth place.
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