CRAWFORD: Chicagoland Speedway Preview
08-27-2009 8:58 pm

The Circle Bar/International Truck and Engine team will utilize chassis CB-20 this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. Crew chief Kevin "Cowboy" Starland recently updated this chassis and it made its 2009 season debut at Kentucky Speedway in July, finishing 17th. It was most recently raced at Nashville Superspeedway four weeks ago, posting a seventh-place finish.

Circle Bar Racing is proud to display the Idealease logo on the bed top and rear quarterpanels of its No. 14 truck this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. Idealease, which has served the truck leasing and rental industry since 1982, offers truck leasing, contract maintenance, and truck rentals. With over 400 locations in the USA, Canada, and Mexico, Idealease is one of North America's largest full service transportation companies and uses International equipment as part of its fleet operation.

With his 19th-place finish last week at Bristol Motor Speedway, Crawford maintained his 10th-place standing in the driver points and is 122 points out of the top five and 567 points out of the lead.

In 312 career Camping World Truck Series starts, Crawford has posted 153 top-10 finishes - a mark of 49.0%.

In his truck series career, Crawford has been running at the finish of 282 races, the most of any driver in the series and a mark of 90.4%.

Crawford has logged over 53,000 miles in NASCAR Camping World Truck Series competition, the most of any driver in series history.

Crawford will make his 313th start - extending a Series record - this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. Crawford's impressive string of race starts began at the Walt Disney World Speedway on January 19, 1997.

Crawford's Thoughts on Chicagoland:

"There's been a lot of excitement around our shop for this week's inaugural NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Chicagoland Speedway. My teammate James Buescher and I will be going to Chicago early to promote the race and our racing program at International's World Headquarters and Melrose Park (Ill.) engine plant. We're going out there to put on a good show for all of the employees and customers of International and will invite them all to come celebrate with us in victory lane on Friday night. The guys at the shop have been hard at work making sure that the two Circle Bar Racing Ford F-150s are the best in our fleet.

"While we haven't raced at Chicagoland before, I probably have 1,000 laps of experience around that track from testing. We used to go there to work on our mile-and-a-half program and did some development work for Ford Motor Co. there when they were about to introduce the all-new Ford F-150 that we currently race. Chicagoland is a mile-and-a-half race track but there's no time to rest. You're wide open all the way around the place. With this being the truck series' first race at Chicagloand, and given the testing ban for this season, it's going to be a pretty level playing field this weekend."