Sauter “Survives” Martinsville finishes fourth

When it comes to driver dominance at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, you think of Johnny Sauter, driver of the No. 98 Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff Toyota Tundra. Sauter, who has two wins at the half-mile “paperclip,” the most of any driver entered in the 250-lap event, didn’t have the dominating performance that he would have hoped for, but turned a ninth-place qualifying effort into a fourth-place finish in Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) Kroger 250.

 

The SmokeySnuff.com driver struggled with finding balance in his Toyota Tundra throughout the race, but maintained a position inside the top-five for a majority of the 250-lap event. At lap 185, late in a run, Sauter got loose going into Turn 1 and his ThorSport Racing teammate, who was behind him on the race track, got into the left rear bumper of the No. 98 machine, causing Sauter to slide up the race track and lose valuable track position. Crew chief Doug George called the ThorSport Racing driver to pit road for four tires, including an air pressure adjustment and fuel, to aid in the handling, and Sauter would restart 12th when the field took the green flag at lap 187 of 250.

 

Sauter would work his way through traffic over the final 71 laps, including a green-white-checker flag finish, and cross the stripe fourth behind race winner, Joey Logano. The top-five result was his fifth top-five finish at the half-mile track.

 

Quote:

“It ended really well. Obviously we didn’t run like we have in the past. Our Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff Toyota was decent. I just started out really, really tight at the beginning of a run and at like lap 15 of a run it’s like somebody flipped a switch and it was so loose I couldn’t drive it. Clearly, we had a balance problem; I don’t know what it is. Nonetheless, we finished fourth and we survived. When you’re not the fastest truck here, you have to kind of change your approach and try to survive and that’s all we did today.”

Thorsport PR