Season preview: Johnny Sauter

Strides: Sauter’s consistent start to the season — with top-10 finishes in 12 of the first 14 races — helped him carry the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series points lead into September. Notably, the steady start came during a stretch of turnover for the ThorSport No. 98, which used three different crew chiefs — Eugene Wachtel, Dennis Connor and Jeff Hensley — through the season.

Besides the time spent atop the standings perch, Sauter also thwarted a personal nemesis by conquering Michigan International Speedway, a track that had yielded zero top-10s in his previous five tries before his breakthrough victory. It was a triumph made even sweeter upon the realization that his father, Jim — who died in October — cherished racing at the two-mile track in the next state over from his family’s Wisconsin home.

“Winning Michigan, it’s been for whatever reason historically a difficult race track for me,” Sauter said, “and now the way things are, that was probably one of my dad’s favorite race tracks, so it even means more to me now than it ever did before. That’s a huge feather in my cap because it’s just one of those places that he loved and I didn’t, and now we’ve got a win there and that’s pretty cool.”

Setbacks: Sauter won the Keystone Light Pole Award at Chicagoland Speedway in September, but dipped out of the points lead after a 14th-place finish. After another midpack finish at Las Vegas, engine failure at Talladega Superspeedway sent him tumbling to fourth in the standings with four races left.

While the rare mechanical breakage halted the No. 98 team’s momentum, Sauter suggested that the team’s ability to compete for checkered flags needs a boost in 2015.

“Talladega was a tough one … but me, personally, I didn’t think we ran well enough all year to be a championship deal,” Sauter said. “We were consistent at times and we did a good job of finishing races, but we need to go out and lead laps and win races, in my opinion, and the points will take care of themselves. It was a good year and consistent year, it just wasn’t a great year and there’s a lot of little things I can point to to say that we need to do better to be better ultimately.”

Quoteworthy: “There’s a lot of things we’re looking at, and it’s funny because a lot of people say well, you’ve got to do this or got to do that, and it’s really just a lot of little things that you have to do different. It’s not one big thing that sticks out like a sore thumb that says, ‘Hey, you’ve got to fix this and you’ll be the best.’ It’s probably eight or 10 little things, and it’s all different aspects.”

What’s next: ThorSport has indicated that the No. 98 team’s flotilla of sponsors — Nextant Aerospace, Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff, Curb Records and Carolina Nut Co. — will return for 2015. Sauter will work with veteran crew chief Doug George, whose most recent tenure was spent at Turner Scott Motorsports helping four-time Camping World Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday Jr. and Ben Kennedy, the 2014 Sunoco Rookie of the Year in the series.

Sauter carries an impressive streak of notching at least one victory in each of the last six seasons, plus a solid run of top-five results in the series standings in four of the last five years. While ThorSport teammate Matt Crafton has hoisted the series crown the past two seasons, Sauter says he’s ready for a taste of the championship laurels by visiting Victory Lane on a more regular basis.

“It’s weird because I still ultimately always go back to this, and maybe my strategy is flawed and that’s why I haven’t won a championship: I think if you win races, the championship will take care of itself,” Sauter said. “In 2011, we came really close to winning a championship and just didn’t get it done. We just had too many bumps in the road. It would be awesome. … To win a NASCAR championship in the truck series, I don’t know that you would really know what that would feel like until you did it.”