- Joey Coulter leads the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series field to the green flag to start the VFW 200 at Michigan International Speedway August 2012
Photo – Todd Warshaw/Getty Images
Up next is NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series‘ 200 mile, 100 lap race, the Michigan National Guard 200 at Michigan International Speedway on Saturday, August 17th at 12:30pm ET. The television broadcast is the début of FOX Sports 1 starting at 12pm ET and the radio broadcast is found on MRN, and Sirius XM Channel 90.
Known as one of the fastest circuits on the schedule, there’s a lot of anticipation for races this week at Michigan International Speedway. The Camping World Truck Series is the first race of the weekend, sharing time with the Sprint Cup teams at the track. The Nationwide Series teams are looking forward to their next road course race at Mid-Ohio and will run their race also on Saturday, later in the afternoon.
The action is always exciting and Michigan International Speedway and there are several drivers looking to make news this week at the track.
The only previous Camping World Truck Series winner on the entry list for Saturday’s Michigan National Guard 200 is Brendan Gaughan. That means there’s a good chance the streak of new winners over the past eight races will continue.
Although Gaughan is looking for his first win of the season, he last won at the track in 2003. Can he repeat that success on the tenth anniversary of his last Michigan win? Amazingly, there have been eight different winners since Dennis Setzer’s 2005 victory.
In fact, Greg Biffle and Travis Kvapil are the only two-time Michigan winners and neither is on the entry list in this week’s race. Any repeat winner at the track this weekend will add their name to this short list.
But there is one driver who could continue the streak of different winners and that driver is Miguel Paludo. Paludo looks to continue his impressive run to a first NCWTS victory at Michigan International Speedway and set a new personal record.
In two previous starts at MIS, the Brazilian native has enjoyed success with a pair of top-tens highlighted by a third-place finish in 2011. Paludo has already equaled his career-best season total of seven top-ten finishes and can set a new career mark if he keeps his streak alive at MIS.
Ryan Blaney, doesn’t have any previous starts at Michigan in a truck, but he enters this weekend on a roll after an impressive win at Pocono last week. Also, the 19-year old driver has some experience at the two-mile oval, finishing second in an ARCA race earlier this year.
In fact, Blaney could take part in two streaks this weekend at the track. With a victory, he would be the ninth consecutive different winner at MIS and the first driver to win back-to-back races since Johnny Sauter did it at the 2013 opener in Daytona.
Returning to Michigan, the site of his career-best NCWTS finish of third last season, Dakoda Armstrong is driving his No. 60 Turn One Racing car with a new crew chief this week. And that crew chief is familiar with putting winning trucks into Victory Lane.
Joe Shear Jr, is a nine-time series winner, recently named as Armstrong’s crew chief and Michigan is their first race together.
What’s interesting about that is that Shear was the man turning the wrenches earlier this season for Johnny Sauter when he picked up a pair of wins at Daytona and Martinsville Speedways. Shear decided to step down at ThorSport Racing in July after he and Sauter celebrated seven victories during their tenure together.
Shear has enjoyed a long career of success in the truck series, with his first series victory in 1996 with Sauter’s older brother Jay. The Richard Childress pairing won at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Shear was also the man on top the pit box for trucks driven by the late Tony Roper and Kevin Cywinski, recording top-20 championship finishes in 1998-99.
There are two Sprint Cup competitors – Kyle Busch and Joey Logano – joining the Truck Series regulars in the Michigan National Guard 200 this week. Busch is attempting to add Michigan to the list of nine tracks, he’s won in all three of NASCAR‘s national series. For Logano, a victory on Saturday, would mean the 24th driver to post victories in the Sprint Cup Nationwide and Camping World Truck series.
