Starr Fights to 16th at Gateway

Madison, Ill. (September 12, 2009) – David Starr recovered from a crash in practice and fought past a mechanical problem during the race to finish 16th in Saturday’s Copart 200 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Gateway International Speedway.

Early during Friday’s first practice session, Starr was entering the 1.25-mile track’s first turn when the throttle hung open under heavy breaking. Starr locked the brakes but still slammed hard into the SAFER barrier, destroying the team’s primary No. 24 Zachry/Harris Trucking Toyota and forcing the team to pull the backup truck off the transporter. After just 90 minutes of preparation, the backup truck was on the track and turning lap times faster than the primary truck giving Starr much reason for optimism in Saturday’s race.

Starr raced into the top ten in the first quarter of the 160-lap race and reported to crew chief Jason Miller that the truck was one of the best he’s ever raced at Gateway. Shortly afterwards, he reported a small miss in the engine and changed to the backup ignition box. That change didn’t help and soon after that he coasted to the pits with no spark in the engine.

“We had the kill switch short out on us, and when that happens it shuts the engine off,” Starr said. “We coasted back to the pits and had to bypass the short, and we lost three laps doing it. It’s a real shame because man, our Zachry Toyota Tundra was fast today. We came out of the pits right behind (leader) Ron Hornaday and we ran right there with him until the next caution. Whenever you have a bad day like this, you look for the positives out of it and we didn’t have to look too hard. We had a really fast truck. All the guys we raced in front of all day were up in the top five and without that problem we should have been there in front of them.”

Starr also expressed gratitude for the hard work his team put in, both in preparing the primary truck and then with the backup.

“You never want to have a throttle hang open on you,” Starr said. “It’s one of the worst things you can have happen. But I hopped right out. I’m a little sore but thanks to my guys it wasn’t any worse. That truck was built very safe and NASCAR has even asked to look at it to see what we did right that other teams can learn from. And then to turn around and get the backup truck ready in such a short amount of time and have it be even faster than the primary truck, that’s just impressive. This was a rough weekend for us for sure, but my guys did an awesome job.”

The next race for Starr and the No. 24 Zachry/Harris Trucking Toyota Tundra is the Heluva Good! 200 at New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, NH on Saturday September 19. The 19th race of the 2009 season is scheduled for a 3 P.M. green flag and will be shown live on SPEED.