Catchfence

Johnny Sauter raced to his first top-10 finish of the season in the rain-soaked O’Reilly Auto Parts 250 at Kansas Speedway on Monday.

Sauter finished 9th in a race that was delayed, postponed and ultimately shortened to 132 laps of a scheduled 167.

“As a competitor, you’re ready to go, and it’s tough waiting out the delays, especially once the race has already gotten underway,” Sauter said. “But we’ve dealt with it before, and you just realize the weather is out of your control. We unloaded fast here, and we felt good about our truck. We’d love to have seen what we could do on that last run, because we had four fresh tires and fuel, and were ready to go to the end. We felt like we would have had a great shot to win the race or be right there, but the rain just bit us again.”

Sauter has had strong trucks and impressive runs through the early season, but didn’t have the results to show for it until yesterday.

“It means a lot to get that first top-10 finish, especially for the guys,” he said. “They’ve been working so hard for me, and we’ve had great runs but haven’t been able to close the deal. We’re not gonna get too excited, obviously, because we expect to finish in the top-5 or top-10 each week, but we can build on this. We’ll come home, clean up the truck, tweak it a little, and take this same piece to Charlotte. We’ll make a strong truck even better for Charlotte, and hopefully get to Victory Lane.”

- ThorSport Racing Press Release