Johnny Sauter punched his ticket into the CWTS Series championship race with a win Saturday at Martinsville Speedway. The victory was the veteran’s second of the season and 12th of his career. Sauter won the opening race of the 2016 season at Daytona International Speedway.
After a restart with only 18 laps left, Johnny Sauter, staved off Sprint Cup rookie Chase Elliott. As a result, he out-raced the # 71 Chevrolet driver to the finish line by .316 seconds. Elliott was awarded the pole position for the start of the Alpha Energy Solutions 200.
Johnny Sauter took the lead from John Hunter Nemechek on Lap 176. The GMS racer had gained track position with a two-tire stop under the yellow. Johnny Sauter kept the lead for the remainder of the event. Including, a stretch that seen the fifth caution of the contest, for a wreck that put Ben Kennedy’s title hopes in jeopardy.
Johnny Sauter and his Maury Gallagher team, knows they’ll be competing for the championship on November 18th at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Fortunately for Sauter, that is where he reeled in the fourth of his 12 career triumphs.
“The key deal is liking a race track, and I can’t think of a better race track to decide a championship than Homestead,” Johnny Sauter said. “It’s a very racy place — you can run all over the race track. I feel like we are peaking at the right time. I feel like we’ve kind of saved some of our best bullets, so to speak, for the end, and we can go and really work hard on our Homestead piece for these next couple weeks.
“But I’m a racer — I think we all are — and we’re not just going to hang out these next two weeks. Texas has been a race track that we’ve had some success at in the past. We sat on the pole there earlier this year and had a shot to win the race … We want to win races, but we’re in a luxurious spot, I guess you’d call it. I want to win a championship.”
Johnny Sauter’s #21 Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff Chevrolet went to the front on the Lap 183 restart. On the same revolution, Chase Elliott passed John Hunter Nemechek for the second position.
After several unsuccessful tries to make a clean pass, the NASCAR full-timer settled for second place finish. Impressively, it was Elliot’s first CWTS race since November 8th of 2013 at Phoenix International.
“I got loose off of Turn 2 coming to the checkered (flag), and that was probably my opportunity to get him,” said Elliott, who will start fifth in Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Relief 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race (1 p.m. ET on NBCSN/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). “But you’ve got to be careful. Those guys are also racing for a championship, and some days it’s just not worth making a mistake or wrecking a guy or whatever.”
Chase racer Ben Kennedy, left Martinsville Speedway wishing Ben Rhodes raced him as fair as Chase Elliot did Johnny Sauter. On the 176 circuit, Rhodes bumped Kennedy’s #33 Chevrolet in Turn 2. As a result, Kennedy went spinning and came to rest in the middle of the track. Afterwords, John Wes Townley collided with Kennedy’s Silverado, smashing the Chase drivers rear-end.
Ben Kennedy managed to stay on the lead lap, but settled for 18th place. The result was the worst among the six Chase speedsters and one just one spot ahead of two-time champion Matt Crafton.
Chase driver Matt Crafton’s luck ran out with about 50 laps remaining when he started to have brake problems. To his dismay, the set-back led to a 17th-place finish and he dropped to fifth in the Chase standings.
After the Alpha Energy Solutions 200, Ben Kennedy and Ben Rhodes had words in a heated exchange on pit road. The Camping World Truck Series officials had to stand between the two fired-up racers while they argued.
“He just wrecked us,” Kennedy told reporters. “He tried to wreck us earlier and failed. On to the next.”
Afterwords, Ben Rhodes said it was completely his fault for spinning Ben Kennedy and expressed his regrets.
“I owe him an apology for sure,” Rhodes said. “I know he’s in the Chase. Thought I could nudge him cleanly but got into him a second time and spun him around.”
John Hunter Nemechek crossed the finish line in third. He was also in front of fellow Chase drivers Christopher Bell and Timothy Peters, who finished out the race in fourth and fifth. Kyle Busch Motorsport’s William Byron, ended his event in eighth. Byron now sits in fourth in the Chase standings. He is only nine points ahead of Matt Crafton and 10 points ahead of Ben Kennedy.
The Camping world Truck series travels to Texas Speedway and Phoenix for the following two weeks. after those races, the Round of 6 will be completed and the qualifying drivers will race it out in Miami.
