Fort Worth, TX – Johnny Sauter scored a season-sweep in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series at Texas Motor Speedway by winning Friday night's WinStar World Casino 350.
Sauter, who won the first truck race at Texas this season in June, grabbed the lead from Parker Kligerman with 11 laps remaining and then easily beat Kligerman to the finish line by 2.2 seconds.
During a late-race round of pit stops under green, Kligerman took just two new tires and captured the lead after the cycle of stops was completed on lap 121. Sauter, who held the top position before the pit stops began, trailed Kligerman by three seconds after taking four fresh tires. But Sauter quickly chased down Kligerman and then made his winning pass.
Sauter notched his sixth career truck win in a season that has been a disappointment for the ThorSport Racing driver following his second-place finish in the series point standings last year. He is currently ninth in the rankings.
"It's been a season of peaks and valleys, for sure," Sauter said. "We've just had a lot of bad luck this year, quite frankly."
Sauter became the third driver in the Truck Series to post a season-sweep at Texas, joining Ron Hornaday Jr. (2008) and Brendan Gaughan (2002-03).
"I'm so proud of this team," Sauter added. "It would be easy to hang our heads after the season that we've had. Another win is cool, and we just need to finish strong."
Rookie Ty Dillon's fifth-place finish coupled with an 11th-place run for James Buescher allowed Dillon to trim Buescher's lead from 21 points to 15. Just two races remain -- Phoenix (Nov. 9) and Homestead (Nov. 16).
Buescher started second and led 31 laps in the early going, but he got hit from behind by Matt Crafton and then bumped into the back of Nelson Piquet Jr., the pole sitter, during a restart on lap 70. Buescher then experienced a vibration, which caused him to fade in the field.
"It was looking like it was going to be a decent night for us, but when I restarted in third and felt like I was in a good position, the 33 (Cale Gale) spun his tires and Nelson had to check up, so it was bumper cars from there and got too much damage," Buescher said. "The truck got really tight and couldn't turn and couldn't run the bottom."
Piquet finished third after leading the most laps with 65, while Kyle Busch bounced back from an electrical problem just before the halfway point to place fourth.
Crafton, Joey Coulter, Todd Bodine, Aric Almirola and Timothy Peters completed the top-10.
Peters now trails Buescher by 25 points, and Kligerman is 27 behind.
Featuring just two cautions, the 147-lap truck race at Texas moved at a record-pace of 154.737 mph and was completed in 1 hr., 25 mins., 30 secs.
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