Drivers have to be separated by team members
RELATED: Quiroga goes four-wide, angers Gaulding
MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- The post-race scrap for position Saturday afternoon between hard-nosed veterans Johnny Sauter and Timothy Peters ended with both trucks practically locked together on Martinsville Speedway's pit road, with both drivers emerging and looking to brawl. But after tempers had soothed slightly, it also ended with an extended olive branch -- at least from one side of the battle.
"I'll buy him dinner if he's willing to talk," Peters said, suggesting local staple Clarence's Steakhouse as a cozy nearby venue.
Sauter was in no mood for chitchat, regardless of Peters' offer to pick up the check. While his rival went on to a second-place finish in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series' Kroger 200 at his home track, Sauter sunk to seventh place after leading the second-most laps (41).
"The future of NASCAR looks bright, don't it? What a disgrace of a race," Sauter fumed to MRN Radio, drawing a chorus of boos from the crowd when his remarks were broadcast over the track's public-address system.
Sauter declared his fringe candidacy for his first series championship over after last week's engine failure and 31st-place finish at Talladega Superspeedway. At Martinsville, he looked poised to at least keep pace if not make gains, but his late run-in with Peters placed him behind the three drivers ahead of him in the series standings -- race winner Darrell Wallace Jr., points leader and teammate Matt Crafton and fifth-place Ryan Blaney.
Points or no points, Sauter was irate and then some, needing to be separated from Peters and his Red Horse Racing team. Officials and other crew members stepped in, but on more than one occasion when Sauter seemed settled down, heated words and the lure of the scrum pulled him back in.
"Take your helmet off, tough guy," Sauter yelled. "You want some? I'll give you all I got. You're nothing."
After a slight cooling-off period and a haphazard search for his car keys to beat a hasty retreat out of the .526-mile track, Sauter's dander was still up.
"You're just racing hard all day, and you get clobbered at the end," Sauter said. "It's the way it is, and if people like that, I guess they should keep coming."
The melee gave Peters an odd season sweep of sorts, with involvement in cool-down lap confrontations in both Martinsville races this year. In March, he crumpled fenders with Peters' Red Horse teammate German Quiroga after their late-race conflict. This time around, Peters was the one in a giving mood.
"Just hard racing. I didn't mean to get into him as much as I did, but did I mean to get into him? Absolutely," Peters said. "He drives pretty recklessly and when I get driven like that, I'm going to return the favor. It's just hard short-track racing. I was on the receiving end of it in the spring, so it was time for someone else to be."
MORE:
READ: Latest
|
PLAY: Monitor your Chase Grid Game picks
|
WATCH: Latest
|
FOLLOW LIVE: Get
|
|---|