FORT WORTH, Texas (Oct. 31, 2011) - Two of the rising
stars in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series - Austin Dillon and James Buescher - are
locked in the third-closest championship points battle in series history and
Buescher will be looking for some "home-state advantage" as the
series heads to Texas Motor Speedway for Friday evening's WinStar World Casino
350.
Dillon, the 21-year-old grandson of NASCAR
Sprint Cup owner Richard
Childress and 2010 series rookie of the year, holds an 11-point
advantage over Buescher, a 21 year old who grew up in nearby Plano and was a
Bandolero Young Guns champion at Lil' Texas Motor Speedway, with just two races
remaining. Both championship contenders view Texas as the track where the
championship can be won or lost.
"I'm looking forward to the next two
races," Dillon said. "It's easy to run wide open around here. With
the good truck that RCR engines gives us and the ECR engines, it makes it a lot
easier on us drivers. This is going to be a fun race."
Buescher holds a slight advantage over
Dillon when it comes to recent performances at Texas Motor Speedway. Buescher
arrives on a run of three consecutive top 10s compared to Dillon's one top-five
finish and two finishes of 25th or worse in his last three visits.
Buescher also has a streak of poles, earning
one in June's WinStar World Casino 350 and before that he captured another in
his first career Nationwide Series start at "The Great American
Speedway!" during last November's O'Reilly Auto Parts Challenge.
"The plan is to take the same truck
back and hopefully it will be just as fast," Buescher said. "I think
Texas is a place where I could pull off my first win and hopefully we can keep
this string of poles going."
Overcoming obstacles is nothing new for Buescher, who has done that all season. His championship aspirations are more impressive considering he failed to qualify for the second race of the truck series season at Phoenix.
Buescher and his Turner Motorsports crew have used the miscue as motivation for the season and hopefully fuel them to their first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship.
"The story of our year has been working as hard as we can," Buescher said. "Having missed a race has definitely had to make us work extra hard to battle back and be where we are in the standings. I honestly think if we would have made Phoenix that we wouldn't be in the championship hunt. I think it made my team want to work harder and made me want to work harder and prove to everybody that we could bounce back from failing like that."
Tickets for the WinStar World Casino 350, which also features The Dallas Morning News Qualifying Days for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series earlier that day, are available by contacting the Texas Motor Speedway ticket office at (817) 215-8500 or by visiting www.texasmotorspeedway.com.