James Buescher Comes Home With The Points Lead
By Les Bailey
After a sixth place finish last weekend in the Kroger 200 at Martinsville, James Buescher returns home for the WinStar World Casino 350K at Texas Motor Speedway, leading the points in the Camping World Truck Series by 21 points over Ty Dillon. The 22 year old native from nearby Plano, Texas should have plenty of friends and family in the stands to cheer the Turner Motorsports driver to the green flag which should drop around 8pm Eastern Time.
June 29, 2012; Sparta, IN, USA; NASCAR Nationwide Series driver James Buescher seen during driver introductions before the Feed the Children 300 at Kentucky Speedway. Mandatory credit: Michael Hickey-US PRESSWIRE
Buescher has had a stellar season in the truck series this year, wining four races on the year, to go with 10 top 5 finishes, and 14 top 10’s. His last win came at the Kentucky 201 in September, and he has followed that with a third place finish at Talladega, and two consecutive sixth place finishes at Las Vegas, and Martinsville. He had one win in the Nationwide Series at the beginning of the season in Daytona, where he won the Drive4COPD 300 in February.
Buescher leads Ty Dillon, grandson of Richard Childress, by 21 points with three races left on the season. Dillon lost his points lead in Martinsville when flying rubber from a tire problem forced him into a 28th place finish. Timothy Peters remains in the third position (-25) after his seventh-place finish at his home track, followed by teammate Parker Kligerman (-36) in fourth and Joey Coulter rounding out the top five, 46 points out of first.
Kyle Busch takes to the track Friday night for only his second appearance on the truck circuit this season. He will be behind the wheel of his number 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota when they go green. He had a second place finish at Atlanta in August. With Kyle cutting his truck series starts so he can devote more time to his Sprint Cup Car, his KBM effort has suffered this year. Last year, his team of three drivers had eight wins, six of them by the boss. Unless he takes the checkered flag tomorrow night, it will be the first time since 2005 he has not won at least one race in the trucks.
A night truck race at the Texas Motor Speedway would not be complete with out talking about Todd Bodine and Brendan Gaughan. Between the two elder statesmen, they have 10 wins on the 1.5 mile D-Oval track, nearly half of the truck races there, since 2002.
Gaughan swept the races in 2002 and again in 2003, capturing four straight wins. He and his No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet finished fourth in the spring beginning a string of four top-five finishes in his last four races.
Bodine though has not had the same amount of luck this year, finishing 30th in the spring visit to the speedway. This season, Bodine has only three top-five finishes on intermediate tracks. His most recent win at Texas was in 2010. His six truck victories at the intermediate track is a record.
The truck action at Texas is usually fast and furious, and I don’t expect anything different tomorrow night. With only 46 points separating the top five drivers and three races left on the 2012 schedule, this should be a race you put on your calendar. We should see some good old fashioned stock car racing with no quarter asked, and none given.
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