Late pass gives Johnny Sauter victory at Martinsville
Apr. 6, 2013 (EDITORS: Will be updated.)
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
MARTINSVILLE,
Va.—Johnny Sauter grabbed the lead from polesitter Jeb Burton with 17
laps left in Saturday's Kroger 250 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series
race at Martinsville
Speedway and pulled away to keep his 2013 perfect record intact.
Sauter
won the season opener at Daytona, and after a break of 43 days, won the
second race of the season at the .526-mile short track. Sauter won for
the eighth time in the
Truck series and posted his first back-to-back victories. It was only
the second time in series history that a driver has opened the season
with back-to-back wins; the first was 2006 by Mark Martin.
Sauter's
ThorSport Racing teammate, Matt Crafton, passed Burton for the second
spot with four laps left. Burton held third, but his top-five finish was
clouded by an accident
on Lap 103, when he turned Ron Hornaday Jr. into the Turn 3 wall while
battling for the lead.
Timothy Peters and Darrell Wallace Jr. completed the top five.
Divergent
pit strategies put Kevin Harvick in the lead for a restart on Lap 151
of a scheduled 250, but Harvick, who had stayed out on old tires, gave
up the top spot to Nelson
Piquet Jr. one lap later and began a freefall back through the field.
Three
circuits after a Lap 162 restart following the eighth caution, Wallace
snagged the lead from Piquet and opened an advantage of more than three
seconds, but both Wallace
and Piquet opted to come to pit road for fresh rubber on Lap 198, under
the ninth caution for Max Gresham's spin in Turn 2.
That
gave the lead back to Burton, who brought the field to green on Lap 203,
with Wallace, Piquet and Harvick deep in the field on new tires. John
Wes Townley's hard crash
in Turn 4 caused the 10th caution on Lap 206 and bunched the field for a
restart on Lap 218.
Wallace
restarted seventh on fresh tires and had worked his way up to third by
the time Harvick tapped and spun Todd Bodine in Turn 3 on Lap 229 to
bring out the 11th caution.
By then, Sauter, who last came to pit road with Burton on Lap 146, had
fought his way into second place and was challenging Burton for the lead
when the yellow flag flew.
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