Following an accident filled race at Daytona, the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series will head west to the Arizona desert Friday evening for the second race of the 2011 season. SS Green Light Racing’s David Starr is looking forward to a fun night of short-track racing in his Zachry Toyota as the truckers make their annual visit to the track just west of Phoenix for the Lucas Oil 150.
Starr has started eleven of the twenty previous events at the uniquely shaped one-mile track that features a dogleg down the back straightaway. Of the twenty races at Phoenix, eighteen have been won by drivers who started in the top-ten; including David, who won his third NCWTS race from the fifth starting position in the Chevy Silverado 150 in November of 2004.
“It’s a great racetrack, it’s challenging and I like that, it’s a drivers track as far as I’m concerned,” explained Starr. “It’s got that dogleg on the back, three and four is very flat and you need to use a lot of brake going into turn one. It’s fun… it’s just a fun track to race on. It’s different than all the other tracks that we race our Zachry Tundra at.”
The trucks visited Phoenix near the end of 2010 and this years schedule has them heading west as the second race on the schedule; Starr brought the No. 81 Toyota Tundra home in eighth place last November, the fifth top-ten of his career at Phoenix.
“We had a great truck there last fall, we finished eighth but we should have finished fifth. I’m looking forward to going back; especially with our new engineer Slash,” Starr continued. “I’m excited to see all the hard work the SS Green Light guys have put into this Zachry Toyota Tundra all winter long.”
“I can’t wait to get to a track where you still need some luck, but your not so much at everyone else’s mercy like we were at Daytona,” David added. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Green Light General Manager Bobby Dotter feel the team is ready for a breakout race. “The guys have worked real hard over the winter to get our fleet of trucks converted over to Tundra’s and Toyota has been very accommodating to us. We continue to build our relationship with David and Zachry and I think we are close to putting it all together to get our first top-five with David. We had a shot at it last fall at Phoenix but we got messed up by a lapped truck at the end of the race.”
David has eleven career NCWTS starts at the Phoenix International Raceway; with five top-ten finishes highlighted his victory in 2004. David’s average start is 19.7 and his average finish is 14.0. He has finished on the lead lap in eight of the eleven previous starts.
The Lucas Oil 150 is the 247th consecutive NCWTS start for the SS Green Light Racing team and the 267th career start for Starr in the series.
There are 41 trucks are on the preliminary entry list for the Lucas Oil 150.
Practice for the NCWTS Lucas Oil 150 will be Friday, February 25th from 11:00 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. with qualifying at 3:05 p.m. The race will be shown live on SPEED TV at 8:00 p.m. All times Eastern. It will also be broadcast live via radio worldwide on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and on SIRIUS Satellite Radio NASCAR Channel 128-XM104.
Zachry Holdings, Inc. is engaged in the planning, building and renewing of the world’s most critical industrial facilities. As one of the largest direct-hire, merit-shop constructors in the United States, Zachry provides a range of engineering, construction and maintenance services to top industrial companies. The 85-year-old, privately held organization is based in San Antonio. Visit www.zhi.com for more information.
For more information about SS Green Light Racing visit www.SSRacingonline.com or email pr@ssracingonline.com.
