For the second time in three NASCAR Camping World Truck Series races, David Starr and the SS Green Light Racing team have earned a top-five finish. Coming from nineteenth starting position on Saturday afternoon at the Michigan International Speedway, Starr brought the ASI Limited/Zachry Toyota home fifth, behind winner Kevin Harvick, his second top-five of 2011.
David qualified nineteenth on Saturday morning with a lap of 41.15 seconds at 174.96 mph on the wide, two-mile track in located in the Irish Hills of Michigan.
As the 100-lap race began to unfold, the No. 81 slowly moved forward in the running order gaining several positions and moved into the top-fifteen following the first pit stop which came during the second caution of the race on lap fourteen.
Typical of racing at Michigan, a long sixty-three lap green flag run followed including rare green-flag pit-stops for all the NCWTS teams. During the long run Starr ran as high as second and as far back as seventeenth a lap off the pace until all the trucks had made their stops and the No. 81 emerged back on the lead lap in the top-fifteen.
During the third caution on lap 79, the Jason Miller led SS Green Light team made several adjustments to free-up Starr’s Tundra, which had been tight through most of the race. As it turned out, the adjustments were just what David needed to finish the 200-mile race.
In NASCAR racing cautions breed cautions and when Johnny Sauter spun on lap 87, David had moved up to eleventh and on the ensuing restart he dropped to the bottom of the racetrack passing several trucks to move into the top-ten. Parker Klingerman suddenly got loose on lap 91 at the front of the field and spun collecting five trucks including contenders Mark Martin and Austin Dillon. David just missed the spinning trucks and emerged in eighth place with just five of the scheduled 100 laps remaining.
On the restart with five laps to go, David jumped to the outside and quickly picked up two positions to sixth as Joey Coulter blew a tire causing the races final caution setting-up a green, white, checker finish.
On the final restart, David again powered to the outside of Jason White and made a run at the third position before Nelson Piquet Jr. got loose and spun directly in front of the No. 81 allowing James Buescher to sneak around on the inside for the fourth spot giving David his second top-five in the last three events.
“Our Zachry Toyota Tundra was not very good at the start of the race, and man you have to run wide open here at Michigan. I would run in there deep and turn the wheel and it would just snap out from underneath us. Jason Miller (crew chief) and Matt Faulkner my engineer… they just kept working on it and on that last pit sop they made a few changes and that thing came alive.”
“What a awesome day for us, I’d like to thank all the Zachry folks, Chasco Construction, Allegro, ASI Limited and everyone that is helping us this year,” he continued. “We’re excited, we just keep getting better and better every weekend and that was a great race for the fans, it was pretty awesome.”
Starr moved up to eleventh in the NCWTS driver’s standings; only fifteen points behind defending series Champion Todd Bodine in tenth.
There is no rest for the NCWTS teams who will race Wednesday night In the O’Reilly 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway. Health and wellness provider Advocare will back the SS Green Light No. 81 at Bristol.
SS Green Light Racing PR
