Sauter focused more on winning than talking with Peters
FORT WORTH, Texas — Johnny Sauter sizzled around Texas Motor Speedway on Thursday as the only driver who topped 180 mph in each practice for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. A week ago at Martinsville he was hot for another reason when he and Timothy Peters got in a post-race scrap where Sauter yelled to Peters, “I’ll give you all I got.”
Peters offered to buy Sauter dinner if he wanted to talk about the disagreement, and on Thursday Sauter was asked if he had time to take Peters up on his offer.
“I haven’t talked to him,” Sauter said, “And to be quite honest with you, there’s really nothing to talk about. I’m more focused on trying to finish the season strong.”
Sauter is 40 points behind ThorSport teammate Matt Crafton and admitted that he’s probably eliminated from championship contention. But for three weeks earlier in the season, Sauter held the points lead, which makes his recent run of bad luck understandably frustrating.
He lost the points lead after a 14th-place finish at Chicago. His slide continued three weeks later with a 31st-place showing at Talladega that dropped him to fourth in the standings. Then, there was the run-in with Peters at Martinsville that led to a seventh-place finish and Sauter not being able to gain any ground.
Whether there will be retaliation down the road is anybody’s guess. For now, even though Sauter hasn’t talked to Peters, he sounded like he was over it.
“You know last week was just Martinsville,” Sauter said. “In the heat of the moment, you get fired up and I kind of get fired up sometimes. Having said all that, it’s, ‘whatever,’ I’m good with it.
“We just need to focus on finishing the season strong. I think we can do that, with really good racetracks for us.”
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