Engine Sidelines Musgrave Early in Texas
A rare engine failure sidelined Ted Musgrave and the No. 59 Team ASE/Harris Trucking Toyota in Friday night’s Sam’s Town 400 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway, relegating the 2005 series champion to 28th at the finish. The failure occurred with less than 20 laps to go while Musgrave was running comfortably in the top ten. Instead of scoring his fourth top-ten finish of the season, Musgrave scored his first “DNF” of the year.
“We’re disappointed we couldn’t make it to the end because the truck had really started to come in,” Musgrave said. “I can’t tell you how many we passed out there tonight but I know it was a lot. It’s not a good way to end the night but there are still some positives we can take away from it. Unfortunately we had a rare engine problem and were out early tonight. That doesn’t happen too often with these Toyota engines.”
One of those positives will be a good setup for the next race on the schedule at Michigan and the return trip to Texas in November.
“When we come back to Texas in the fall, we’ll unload for practice just like we were at the end,” Musgrave said. “We had a decent baseline and made a lot of great adjustments through the race and we were pretty good at the end. That basic setup should work pretty well at Michigan next week too so we’re excited to get back to the track.”
With the DNF, Musgrave dropped two positions in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship standings. He now sits tied with Colin Braun for 14th, nine points behind 13th-place Kyle Busch and 95 points behind tenth-place David Starr.
Next up for Musgrave and the HT Motorsports team is the Cool City Customs 200 at Michigan International Speedway on Saturday June 14. The 100-lap race around the 2-mile D-shaped oval in the Irish Hills of Michigan is slated to start shortly after 3 P.M. Eastern and will be televised live on SPEED. MRN Radio will have the live radio broadcast on select affiliates nationwide and on Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 128.
