MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Johnny Sauter won two of the three Chase races in the Round of 6 for the Camping World Truck Series, but the veteran racer says it would be wrong to call him and his GMS Racing team the favorite in Friday night’s championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“I don’t ever consider myself the favorite,” Sauter said Thursday at the Loew’s Hotel here. “Anything can happen. We’ve seen it time and time again. I feel really comfortable with where we are as an organization and a team going into this race, but to say that I’m a favorite, that would not be doing ourselves a service.”
Sauter, Timothy Peters, Christopher Bell and Matt Crafton make up the Chase drivers who will be competing for the series’ title in Friday night’s Ford EcoBoost 200 (8 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Crafton’s a two-time series champion (2013-14) and drives for ThorSport Racing; Peters doesn’t have a win this season, but has managed to survive through the inaugural Chase for the series to put his Red Horse Racing team in title contention; Bell’s the only youngster in the group, a winner at Gateway earlier this year in the No. 4 Toyota for Kyle Busch Motorsports.
Sauter is the only one of the four finalists to bag a win in the Chase — he went back to back with victories at Martinsville and Texas to advance to the finals.
Crafton’s had three top five finishes; Peters has four while Bell has posted a pair.
That the title group is heavy on veterans isn’t a surprise to Sauter, who said the more experienced drivers “just probably through the course of the year raced a little differently than some of the younger guys … maybe a little bit smarter, and that just comes with experience, taking care of your equipment, things like that.”
Having spent time in the Sprint Cup, XFINITY and Truck Series, Sauter has seen just about every type of situation arise; for that reason, he said it’s unlikely anything can happen that will catch himself or his GMS team off guard.
“For me personally, I feel like I’ve seen and heard and have done it all so nothing would surprise me in the least,” he said. “Having said that, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure nothing crazy happens, nothing foolish.
“But this sport is very humbling; you can have all the momentum in the world, everything going your way, win two of the last three races in the final round and tomorrow night anything can happen.”
Sauter has 13 career wins in the Truck Series and he won three times in the XFINITY Series. His Sprint Cup career consisted of 85 starts for a handful of teams, including Haas CNC before it became Stewart-Haas Racing.
He finished second in points in the Camping World Truck Series in 2011 and fourth the past three seasons. But he’s never won the title. It’s something he’s considered, especially now that he has another opportunity. What it would feel like to win it and what it might feel like if he doesn’t.
“I’ve definitely done that,” he said. “What a championship would mean for GMS as an organization for all the guys; this is a long season … I can make a case for both sides. It’s means nothing until we run that race tomorrow night.
“You have to make sure you don’t get caught up in it from a mental standpoint. Just keep doing what we’ve been doing.”