Johnny Sauter’s lack of outright success at Charlotte Motor Speedway, site of Friday night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Carolina Education Lottery 200, is no deterrent to him believing he has a pretty good chance of a top-five finish — if not his 10th trip to Victory Lane after a truck race — with his No. 98 Nextant Aerospace / Curb Records Toyota Tundra.
Five of Sauter’s nine career Truck Series victories have come on 1.5-mile speedways — including his inaugural win for the Sandusky-based team in 2009 at Las Vegas and a sweep at Texas Motor Speedway in 2012, both tracks operated by Charlotte’s parent company, Speedway Motorsports Inc.
Sauter’s actual record in five career Charlotte starts isn’t stellar — an average finish of 16.8 with an average start of 12th — but he was heading to a possible career-best finish a year ago when he was intentionally wrecked by another competitor.
That 28th-place result, the first Charlotte race Sauter had failed to finish, put a real dent in his 2013 championship hopes but the Wisconsin native is nothing if he’s not resilient.
And it’s not an ace-in-the-hole necessarily — because a handful of trucks were at the fast, 1.5-mile speedway about a month ago for two days of testing — but it does give Sauter and his ThorSport Racing teammates, Matt Crafton and Jeb Burton, some comfort after Thursday’s schedule was wiped-out by rain.
“We tested from 1 o’clock until 9 o’clock — right when we’re going to be qualifying and racing (Friday),” Sauter said. “Unfortunately for me, we didn’t have a very good test but we’ve completely rebuilt our Nextant Tundra since then.
“So I don’t expect to have any problems. We’ll only have a two-hour practice Friday morning so it’ll be pretty interesting, to say the least. I’m just glad we can rely on our teammates a little bit, here. Dennis (Connor, three-time Truck Series champion crew chief) has had some success on this type of track so I’m really excited to be working with him.”
Friday’s schedule was adjusted by the rain-out to include a single, two-hour practice session from 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. ET. The final hour is scheduled to be televised on FOX Sports 1.
“Had we not had that test here I really think (the cancellation) would’ve been a wrench in the plan, for sure,” Sauter said. “But I think everybody’s pretty much got a baseline setup — a really good idea of where they want to be.
“(Losing practice) is not the end of the world although I’d like to get on the racetrack as much as we could, but if it’s not meant to be, oh well… Like I said, Crafton and Burton both had pretty decent tests, so we’ve got Dennis back and I don’t have any reservations about anything.”
Sauter’s best finish, and his only top-10 at Charlotte, is a sixth in 2011. His favorite intermediate-track Tundra was wiped-out in one of a number of multi-truck wrecks last weekend at Kansas and, given his misfortune a year ago and last week, Sauter’s hoping for a silver lining Friday night that might enable him to move up from fifth in the standings.
“I hope everybody maybe had their eyes opened a little bit last weekend,” Sauter said of the Kansas debacle. “I don’t know — it was the first mile-and-a-half we’d raced on in a while and the first time with these 2014-style trucks. Maybe they’ll take care of their stuff a little bit better (Friday) night because you hate to lose race trucks.
“Duke and Rhonda Thorson (owners) and everybody at ThorSport does a good job and they build really nice Tundras and the one we lost (at Kansas) was probably my favorite truck, so you hate to wipe something like that out.”
But, as Crafton noted, Sauter also doesn’t think the “wrecking mentality” will carry over to the older Charlotte pavement.
“I don’t think you’ll see (aggressive driving and multi-truck wrecks),” Sauter said. “Charlotte is a pretty racy racetrack and pretty wide and you’ll see people being able to run all over the racetrack and hopefully not be running into one another because that’s not good.”
Friday afternoon the 33 entered trucks will have the Truck Series’ second multi-segment, elimination-style group Keystone Light Pole Qualifying session to set the up-to 36-truck starting lineup at 5:40 p.m., with live coverage on FOX Sports 1 beginning at 5:30.
Friday evening’s 134-lap, 201-mile main event will be telecast live on FOX Sports 1 at 8:30 p.m. ET, preceded by The Setup pre-race show at 8. The live broadcast on MRN and Sirius XM NASCAR Radio begins with pre-race coverage at 8. Live timing & scoring for the weekend’s events will be at www.nascar.com.
ABOUT NEXTANT AEROSPACE:
Nextant Aerospace is recognized as the first company in the world to introduce aircraft remanufacturing to the business jet market. The Nextant 400XTi is a completely-rebuilt Beechjet 400A/XP with Williams FJ44-3AP engines and the Rockwell Collins Pro Line 21™ integrated avionics suite. The new aircraft also has major aerodynamic enhancements and an improved engine mounting configuration with redesigned nacelles and pylons. The 400XTi is delivered with a two-year full-aircraft warranty and after-sales support provided by a global network of owned and authorized service centers. Founded in 2007, Nextant is based in Cleveland, Ohio. Nextant is a Directional Aviation Capital company. For more information, please visit, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @NextantAero or join us on LinkedIn.
ABOUT CURB RECORDS:
Curb Records is one of the world’s leading independent music companies. Owned and operated by Mike Curb since 1962, Curb Records has achieved 375 Billboard number one records, nearly 1,200 Billboard Top Ten records and charted just under 4,000 Billboard records. Today’s roster includes some of the top names in Country, Christian and Pop/Rock music. Curb Records was honored as Billboard Magazine’s 2001 Country Music Label of the Year and Radio & Records Magazine’s 2005 Overall Gold Label of the Year. For more information visit www.curb.com.
ABOUT THORSPORT RACING:
ThorSport Racing, based in a state-of-the-art 100,000-square-foot facility in Sandusky, Ohio, is the longest-tenured NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team. ThorSport, which has run in the Truck Series since 1996, in 2014 will run the No. 88 Menards Toyota Tundra driven by 2013 drivers’ champion Matt Crafton, the No. 98 Nextant Aerospace/Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff/Carolina Nut Co./Curb Records Toyota Tundra driven by Johnny Sauter and the No. 13 Carolina Nut Co. Toyota Tundra driven by Jeb Burton in the Truck Series and the No. 13 Toyota Camry in the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards.