Johnny Sauter recently looked over the next several races on the Camping World Truck Series schedule and came to an encouraging conclusion.

It's the kind of supposition a driver can only reach when he's having a year like that being enjoyed by Sauter, who sits atop the series standings heading into Friday night's WinStar World Casino 400k at Texas Motor Speedway, where he will start fifth.

"I ... looked at the next five or six races and I'm like, 'Damn. We've got a good shot to win all these races.'"

--JOHNNY SAUTER

* Texas: Lineup | Practice 1 | Practice 2

"I just looked at the schedule [Monday] morning actually and looked at the next five or six races and I'm like, 'Damn. We've got a good shot to win all these races,' " Sauter said.

Conventional wisdom indeed holds that -- based on his season to date, which features a win and six top-10 finishes -- Sauter is a threat just about everywhere the Truck Series goes these days.

That's bad news for Sauter's championship rivals, who right now consist mainly of a pair of youngsters in unheralded second-place points man Cole Whitt and third-place Austin Dillon.

Sauter leads the rookie Whitt by 12 points and Dillon by 30 as the Trucks prepare to race at Texas, a fast 1.5-mile track where Sauter finished second in both series events last year.

If Sauter runs as well or better at TMS this time around, he's likely to pad his points lead, which, despite being within reach, is significant under this year's point system.

But if you think Sauter, a veteran of 350 starts across NASCAR's three national series, is comfortable with his cushion, think again.

He knows as well as anyone the pitfalls that can beset a team, even one as stout as his No. 13 ThorSport Racing group.

"It's a 12-point advantage right now, which that's nothing," said Sauter, who picked up a win in April at Martinsville. "That's a flat tire in a race or a pit-road speeding penalty. It's just a simple mistake like that and they're right back in it. Don't get me wrong: Having a bigger point lead is better but I'm not going to rest easy till Homestead, and between now and then is a long ways."

So while Sauter is confident that he and his Sandusky, Ohio-based team have the goods to go for victories no matter the track, he's cautious about putting too much stock in his points position.

With just eight of 25 races complete, more than two thirds of the season still remains. And Sauter isn't even ready to write off Ron Hornaday (sixth in points) and Todd Bodine (ninth in points), two former champions who have endured a rough start to 2011 and would need a major recovery to get in the thick of the title hunt.

"Obviously based on the past, Hornaday has won four championships and Bodine's won a couple. So you're foolish if you don't worry about it," Sauter said. "You say that they're far behind right now, but who's to say that some of the misfortunes that they've had couldn't happen to us and we could find ourselves in the same position. It's just too early to rule anybody out."