Starr shines brightest en route to his first win

Monday, Oct. 14, 2002 | 9:17 a.m.

David Starr proved himself a capable NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver by winning Sunday's Las Vegas 350 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but the 35-year-old Texan would never cut it as a Formula One driver.

Starr, the pole-sitter, inherited the race lead with five laps remaining when Ted Musgrave dropped off the pace with a cut tire. A few laps earlier, Starr had refused to allow fellow Chevrolet driver -- and series points leader -- Mike Bliss to pass him while the two were battling for second place.

"My crew chief came over the radio and said 'if Bliss is faster than you, let him go,' " Starr said after earning his first career Truck series victory in his 66th start. "Well, I ain't going to let him go. (Bliss) is a Chevrolet-backed team and he's leading the points chase right now and if I can help my fellow manufacturer competitor make sure that Chevrolet wins the championship, yeah, that's another story.

"I thought that I had a good enough truck where I could win so ... thank God I just didn't get off the gas and let (Bliss) go. I mean, this is racing and you're not supposed to pull over for anybody."

Bliss, who finished second, led four times during the race for 66 laps but couldn't overtake Starr after Musgrave fell out on lap 142.

"I was real good behind Ted, I just was real tight behind (Starr) for some reason and I just couldn't get by (him)," Bliss said of the closing laps. "But the last lap is what counts, not the whole day.

"I got racing (Starr) for second there and all of a sudden we're racing for first. I blew a couple lines on the last couple laps in trying too hard and David got away."

Although Bliss was denied his sixth win of the season, he extended his lead over Rick Crawford in the points race from 55 to 85 with three races remaining.

Still, that was little consolation.

"I feel like somebody stepped on my dog (and) killed it," Bliss said. "I think we had the best truck out there all day."

Dennis Setzer finished third and Travis Kvapil was fourth as Chevrolet swept the top four positions. Jason Leffler was fifth in a Dodge, Crawford took sixth in a Ford and Robert Pressley, Las Vegan Brendan Gaughan and Musgrave rounded out the top nine in Dodges. Jason Small was 10th in a Chevy.

After the last of two caution periods, it appeared as if Musgrave would cruise to his third victory of the season and second in a row in Las Vegas. Musgrave was second to Bliss when the race restarted on lap 124 but quickly slipped past Bliss in Turn 2.

Musgrave stretched his lead to more than a second when his right-front tire started to go flat and he started slowing drastically heading into Turn 3 on lap 142.

"That's just the way our luck has been this year," Musgrave said. "We've got a good team ... but we just don't have the luck this year.

"We thought we had a shot to win it but we cut a tire down on the backstretch. We must have just run over a piece of steel or something and it cut the right-front tire down."

It was hard to tell who was more surprised by the late-race turn of events: Musgrave or Starr.

"When (Musgrave) slowed down, I just couldn't believe it -- we were leading the race," Starr said. "I was excited for a split second, but then it was back to business.

"At that point, I didn't want to do anything stupid."

Until Musgrave's misfortune, Starr said he wasn't sure he had a truck that could pass Musgrave.

"He wasn't pulling away from us and I don't think I was gaining anything," Starr said. "Trying to catch Ted Musgrave and trying to hold off Mike Bliss at the same time was pretty tough.

"I'm glad it ended up the way it did -- and I can't believe it did end up the way it did -- but I don't think I had anything for Ted Musgrave."

Starr won by a margin of .492 seconds -- about three truck lengths -- and set an LVMS track record for trucks with an average speed of 135.394 mph.