Ft. Worth, Tex. (November 4, 2010) – Matt Crafton will start Friday night’s WinStar World Casino 350 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race from the pole after blistering the field in time trials at Texas Motor Speedway on Friday night. Crafton’s fast lap in the No. 88 Menards/McGuire-Nicholas Chevrolet was 29.964 seconds, averaging 180.216 miles per hour. He was the only driver to break the 180 mph barrier during qualifying.
It’s the fourth career pole for Crafton, and his first since winning the pole for this race last year.
Teammate Johnny Sauter will start seventh after turning a lap of 30.129 seconds/179.229 miles per hour in the No. 13 Farmpaint.com/Curb Records Chevrolet.
“It had been a year since we won a pole, but I knew coming here we’d have a great chance to make it happen,” Crafton said. “Whether it’s the 88 truck or the 13 truck, ThorSport Racing has had an awesome intermediate program the over the last few years. Our guys know what it takes to get us around these tracks. We lost what had been our best intermediate truck in a crash here in the spring, but the guys have this truck running every bit as good as the other one. And Texas is definitely a horsepower track and we had a ton of it under the hood tonight. I’d like to thank Mark Smith and everyone at PME for all their hard work to help make this happen.”
With the majority of NCWTS qualifying sessions happening the day of the race, there is one benefit to qualifying the night before: Crafton and the team now have a little time to enjoy their accomplishment.
“At least we get a night to enjoy it,” Crafton said. “But the big thing is for us to come back here tomorrow and end up first again tomorrow night. We’ve proved that we can be fast for one lap, now we have to be fast for 147 laps. We aren’t going to go out and celebrate like we won the race, but my guys definitely have a little bounce in their step and their heads up high. It never hurts to come back to the track with some momentum and we’ll surely have that tomorrow when it’s time to race.”
Crafton will be looking to extend his consecutive top-ten finishes streak to 14 straight, and he has an idea on the perfect way to do it.
“We aren’t looking at this weekend as a chance to make it 14 straight top tens, we’re looking at it as a chance to get a win,” he said. “If we end up in victory lane, that streak continues on and takes care of itself.”
Sauter, who has also won a pole at Texas in June 2009 driving for ThorSport Racing, is cautiously optimistic about his chances for victory tomorrow night.
“We have an awesome truck for tomorrow,” Sauter said. “This is our favorite truck and it drove just like we expected it to. We’d like to be up where Matt is right now, but tomorrow is when it counts for us. For us it’s not about where you start, it’s where you finish and we really think we’ve got a good chance to go fight for the win.”
The WinStar World Casino 350 will be broadcast live on SPEED starting with a 30-minute pre-race show starting at 8:30 PM Eastern. The race can also be heard live on select affiliates of the MRN Radio Network and on Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 128.
