After spending lots of the foremost two-thirds of the Mountain Dew 250 lounging around at the support of the lead draft, Johnny Sauter charged towards the forepart with ten laps to go and figured in a three-wide battle for the win, crossing the stripe side-by-side with winner Kyle Busch and second-place Aric Almirola. Although in third at the end, Sauter was only 29-one thousandths of a second behind Busch at the stripe.
"What an awful day for ThorSport Racing," Sauter said after climbing from the#13 FarmPaint.com/Curb Records Chevrolet. "We talked about dropping to the game before the speed and we decided it would likely be better to go back there so we dropped out of business before the beginning and just hung out back there. When it was time to go we got hooked up with the 51 (Almirola) and we went right to the front. We learned yesterday in use that we could really run to the look with him behind us. We`d have never made it back up thither without getting hooked up with him. I saw Busch rub against him through the tri-oval and it broke their momentum and I dove to the outside. We had so much momentum with Matt (Crafton) on our bumper, if the run was 100 yards longer we`d be celebrating a ThorSport 1-2 finish. Considering what normally happens at these races we`re ecstatic coming out of here third and fourth."
Sauter made some aggressive moves over the last third of the race, including diving into a trap that was nearly six inches longer than the duration of his truck.
"When you`re at the end of these races you give to get aggressive. The open and direct that you do in the first 80 laps is out the windowpane and it`s about taking whatever you can get," Sauter said. "Almirola pushed us to the presence and he did what he had to do to get hooked up with the guy he said he`d play with so he hung us out to dry. If I didn`t go with him we`d have been shuffled back to the end of the business and our day would have been done."
Sauter heaped praise on the ThorSport Racing team and his crew chief Joe Shear for spending lots of the four-week break between the Las Vegas and Martinsville races working on the Talladega truck.
"This truck was exactly as well as we view it would be," Sauter said. "It blew the best numbers of any ThorSport Racing truck ever in the tip tunnel. We knew we had a large engine. Joe and the guys did an incredible job with this truck. The sole real worry we had were the things that were out of our control. We did our best to check out of harm`s way until the end and we knew if we did that we`d give a heavy shot to win it at the end."
Sauter remains 3rd in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship standings, 98 points behind Almirola in second. He leads his ThorSport Racing teammate Matt Crafton, who stirred up to fourth, by 94 points.
Next up for Sauter and the#13 FarmPaint.com/Curb Records Chevrolet is the Winstar World Casino 350 at Texas Motor Speedway on Friday, November 5th. The speed will be televised live on SPEED starting with a 30-minute pre-race show at 7:30pm Central. The speed can likewise be heard live on select affiliates of the MRN Radio network nationwide and on Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 128. (10/30/2010)(ThorSport Racing PR)
No comments:
Post a Comment