Musgrave, No. 9 Team ASE Toyota Finish 11th at Texas

Musgrave Just Shy of Top-10 Finish in Texas; Remains 4th in Championship Standings

Fort Worth, Texas (November 5, 2006)  Ted Musgrave had a truck fast enough to carry him into the top five, but lost ground on a pit stop that forced the NASCAR veteran to fight his way back for a near top-ten finish.  Musgrave's No. 9 Team ASE Toyota came down pit road for routine service and an adjustment during the first round of pit stops, and the few extra seconds it took to make a minor chassis adjustment sent Musgrave from the lead pack to the tail of the longest line on the restart.  Fighting from the back without the benefit of the clean air the leaders were running in, Musgrave overcame track position to climb back for 11th at the finish.

"The Team ASE truck was good, but you know you always want more," Musgrave said.  "We got caught in the pits when we made our adjustment; it took just a little too long.  Track position means a lot, and we restarted at the tail of the lead lap.  Clean air means so much and when you're in the back of the pack you don't have it.  It makes it tough to get to the front.  If this was a 500-mile Cup race we could have made it back, but this was a pretty short race so it was hard to get back to the front."

Musgrave said that although there was a lot of hard racing in the pack, there was a lot of respect in the pack that kept that racing clean.

"Yeah there was a lot of hard racing back there," Musgrave said.  "When you're racing for 12th or 15th and you're trying to make your way back to the front there is a little more give and take.  Each person knows they don't have a shot to win unless they get up there.  The closer you get to the front, the harder that gets and some of those guys don't want to give up those spots as easy."

The race ran without any multiple-truck incidents, and the only cautions throughout the evening that involved contact with the wall were the result of right front tires going down on the 24-degree banking.

"The reason you saw that was the coil-binding setups those teams were trying," Musgrave said.  "You need to have your camber just right when you do that, and if you don't, well, you saw what happens when you don't.  We haven't tried it yet. Maybe we need to, but then again, NASCAR rules could be totally different next year so who knows."

Musgrave remains fourth in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship standings, 97 points behind David Reutimann in the race for the third position.  Musgrave's Germain Racing teammate continues to lead Johnny Benson by 137 points heading into the penultimate round of the 2006 season at Phoenix International Raceway.  The Casino Arizona 150 will be televised live by SPEED at 8 P.M. Eastern on Friday November 10.  MRN Radio will have the live radio call on select affiliates nationwide, and TruckSeries.com will have complete event coverage online at www.truckseries.com.