Power Stroke Diesel 200
O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis
Indianapolis, Indiana
- Ted has had mixed results at this track with finishes of 6-8-14-16-23-25.
- Staying out of trouble at this track is the key.
- Ted would be 2nd quick in the first practice and 9th quick in the final practice.
- Qualifying would be rained out and Ted would start 7th due to owner points.
- There would be a 2 hour rain delay before the start of this race.
- Green flag.....
- Ted would fall a spot to 8th after a few laps.
- 14 laps in and Ted is still 8th.
- On the start Skinner and Hornaday were beating and banging for the first 2 laps.
- 27 laps in and Ted is still 8th and Skinner is dropping like a rock after leading.
- Caution #1 for a spin on lap 31.
- Ted was 9th at the time.
- Ted pits for a loose handling truck and gets 4 tires fuel and adjustments.
- Restart on lap 43 and Ted is 23rd.
- Caution #2 for a one truck wreck and Ted made it to 18th.
- Restart on lap 52.
- Lap 58 and Ted is up to 15th.
- Lap 61 and Ted is now 13th.
- Lap 64 and Ted is 12th.
- Believe it or not Ted is now stuck behind some 3 wide racing at ORP (Sprague-Skinner-Sauter).
- It took a few laps for Ted to pass Skinner and hw is now 11th.
- Caution #3 for a spin on lap 79.
- Ted pits again for 4 tires and fuel.
- Restart on lap 83 and Ted is 14th.
- Caution #4 for another wreck #61 Thompson.
- Restart on lap 93 and Ted is 14th.
- Caution #5 on lap 97 as the #88 spins the #7.
- Restart on lap 104 and Ted is now 12th.
- On the start Hornaday drives in deep to try and pass 2 trucks in a turn. Guess what? He couldn't hold his line and bumped the #13 to get past both trucks. Ron has been driving like a maniac all race and NO warning. The guy will just not pass clean on the short tracks. I saw it at Mansfield and now here. Just because you have a good truck does not mean you can get to a truck and immediatly bump them out of the way without trying to pass clean.
- Caution #6 for a spin.
- Restart on lap 128 and Ted is now 10th.
- Caution #7 for a 2 truck wreck.
- Restart on lap 138 and Ted is 11th.
- Kvapil is leading followed by Hornaday-Benson-Bodine-Crawford.
- 50 to go and Ted is still 11th.
- 30 to go and Ted is still 11th.
- Bodine has a bumper falling off and no black flag for it.
- Caution #8 as the #50 spins.
- Restart with 11 to go and Ted is still 11th.
- Ted is 10th with 8 to go.
- Caution #9 for a wreck. It was a late toss of the yellow almost a whole lap went by.
- Green-white-checkered finish and Ted starts 10th.
- Ted ends up 12th on the day as that last caution bunched the trucks up.
- Hornaday wins.
- Ted is still 8th in the points after this race.
- Ted gained a few points on the leader (Skinner) and is now -618 back.
- After the race Ted said, (truckseries.com)
"Usually when we have one of those green-white-checkered finishes I can pick up a couple of positions, but this time we gave up a couple of spot,” Musgrave said. “We restarted tenth, and I saw Brendan (Gaughan) coming and I ran the middle lane to try to block as much of the track as I could. He ended up getting his nose beside me and took the high groove and got past me. Then on the last lap (Mike) Bliss went to the low side and we raced pretty hard. He had a real good truck to be able to run that low lane like that. We had a good drag race off the last corner, and he ended up just barely beating me to the line.”
“I think everyone did a great job racing very clean,” Musgrave said. “We saw some beating and banging but that was just short track racing. As we were leaving, I noticed we didn’t have nearly as much bent and wrecked equipment as we usually do here. Sometimes you get that when there’s a long rain delay. The guys really used their heads because I don’t think any of us wanted to come back and race on Sunday morning. It was such a clean race; I don’t think I even had a single really close call all night long.”
“Toyota is going to bring us to Richmond for some testing this week,” Musgrave said. “Once we get through that, I think we’re going to have a big pool party at the house for my guys. They’ve worked really hard this year and they deserve it. We’ve already made the flyers for it and everything; it’s going to be a big deal. Then we’ll get ready to head to Nashville.”
- On to Nashville in 2 weeks.