Friday
Raybestos Rookie Heluva Good! 200 Advance: Johnny Sauter and Tayler Malsam
Press Release
HELUVA GOOD! 200
NASCAR CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES RACE
AT NEW HAMPSHIRE MOTOR SPEEDWAY,
SEPTEMBER 18, 2009, PAGE 1.
- Johnny Sauter leads Tayler Malsam by 16 points (188-172) in the overall Raybestos Rookie standings entering Saturday’s Heluva Good! 200. Sauter is 10th in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship standings, best of any Raybestos Rookie.
- Sauter and Malsam spoke about a variety of topics following today’s first practice session at New Hampshire.
THE PERFORMANCE OF THIS TEAM HAS REALLY PICKED UP IN THE LAST SIX RACES OR SO. “It has. A lot of variables have played into the success becoming better. I feel like we’ve worked on our stuff a little bit, gotten it a lot better. Found some things that I liked, which has made it better. A new crew chief has made it better. Just a lot of things, a lot of ingredients to make us run better and quite frankly I see us getting better and better every week and hopefully we can continue to do that the rest of the season.”
COMMENT ON YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH TEAMMATE MATT CRAFTON. “We’ve leaned on those guys pretty hard, especially over the last two months. We brought in Joe Shear and he’s leaned on Bud [Haefele, Crafton’s crew chief] and those guys pretty hard. I think it’s made a huge impact and obviously it’s helped our program. We’ve got a little bit of work to do. I’ve said it all along, I might be a Raybestos Rookie in the truck series but we should be able to win races and I’ll be disappointed if we don’t.”
YOU FINISHED SECOND LAST WEEK AT GATEWAY. WERE YOU PROUD OF THAT OR FRUSTRATED THAT YOU DID NOT WIN?
“There’s always a way around somebody, especially when you got your nose in there. I think the precedent had been pretty much set if you did that what was going to happen so it wasn’t worth risking it. I was disappointed in myself. I mean I felt like I should have but that’s the Monday morning quarterback. You sit there and go I should’ve done that. Nonetheless it’s second-place and it’s the best finish that the 13 truck has had. I got us up in the top-10 in points. There’s a lot of positives but you know as a driver you always want more. I’m here today and we’re top-10 in practice and you’re just not happy. You just want more.”
“I think it means a lot of the guys, obviously. I’ve never won a rookie of the year in any form of NASCAR. Like I’ve said all along I’ve had mixed emotions about being eligible but rules are rules and we are eligible so we might as well run for it. If we could do that it’s just another feather in your cap.”
HOW DIFFERENT IS THE TRUCK HERE AT NEW HAMPSHIRE THAN THE CUP CAR OR NATIONWIDE CAR?
“The Nationwide cars I haven’t ran here in quite a while, probably three, four years. The Cup car obviously with the horsepower it’s just a different type of driving all together. You’ve got more power, you’re going faster down the straightaways and you see ‘em use a lot more brake. The trucks are more momentum type based so it’s a little bit different but just knowing the racetrack is a good feeling.”
TAYLER MALSAM, No. 81 ONE EIGHTY TOYOTA: YOU AND JOHNNY SAUTER ARE HAVING A CLOSE BATTLE FOR RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR. YOU HAVEN’T MADE UP MUCH GROUND ON SAUTER.
“It’s definitely hard to see that we’re not leading the Raybestos Rookie points because this team does such a good job. I think we’ll beat ‘em. We had two bad weeks there and he’ll have his bad weeks upcoming. It’ll come down to the wire definitely. I think we’ve got a better team than they do and I think we’ve got better trucks and we’ll be fine.”
HOW BIG WOULD IT BE TO EDGE OUT SAUTER AND WIN RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR?
“Oh it’s huge, I mean, just knowing that we can beat a guy like Sauter who has been to all these places a million times and we’ve never been here before. It’d be a big confidence booster going into next year for sure.”
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST THING THAT YOU’VE LEARNED SO FAR THIS SEASON?
“Take every track like a new one and then the whole aero package. There’s just so many things I’ve learned. It just all comes in second nature. A big thing is patience. Like last week, we stayed in there, hang in there and we had a top-five out of it and everyone wrecks out because they don’t have patience. Still a lot of things to be learned and Doug [Wolcott, crew chief] and the team have done a very good job of helping me learn a lot of them.”
“I figure when you’re on the track you don’t need to let your emotions show, just race. When you get off the track you can go find the guy in the parking lot or something but I mean out there you’ve got people’s lives on the line and you’ve got to be careful. I mean you’ve got a lot of money out there and everyone’s watching so you might as well have fun and drive hard and not do stupid things like what happened last weekend. That’s how it should be and everyone should just deal with their emotions outside of the track. We’ll see what happens this weekend.”
ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR PERFORMANCE THIS YEAR?
“Yeah definitely. We’ve had like ten 10 top-10s in 18 races and that’s pretty good. Skinner is doing awesome and he’s doing awesome helping me. I think we’re having a really good year. It’s challenging and more fun to be in a battle with Johnny. It gives myself more motivation to do better.”
WHAT IS THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE MIKE SKINNER HAS GIVEN TO YOU?
“Oh, he’s given me a lot. He’s helped me out everywhere on lines to run and how this track is going to help this truck and everything. He’s just been a big help.”
COMMENT ON RACING HERE AT NEW HAMPSHIRE.
“This place is tough. It’s not as tough as last weekend but it’s a lot of fun because you can run more than one lane which is my type of racetrack. We’ve got a really good truck I think and we’ll se what happens.”
Raybestos® brand brake and chassis parts are produced by affiliated companies in Affinia’s Global Brake and Chassis Group, the leading manufacturer of braking systems and chassis parts in the transportation industry. The brake line includes everything from brake drums to rotors, pads, shoes and hydraulic parts, while the chassis line features tie rods, ball points, idler arms and sway bar links. Raybestos brand braking and chassis systems are also the only systems used by NASCAR’s Joe Gibbs Racing in competition. For more information about Raybestos brakes, visit Raybestos.com. For more information on Raybestos Chassis visit RaybestosChassis.com
Affinia Group Inc. is a global leader in the on and off-highway replacement products and service industry. In North America the Affinia family of brands includes WIX® Filters, Raybestos®, AIMCO® and BrakePro® brake products, and McQuay-Norris® and Raybestos™ Chassis parts. South American and European brands include Nakata®, Filtron®, Urba® and Quinton Hazell®. For more information, visit affiniagroup.com.
* Affinia Group Inc.’s affiliated companies include Brake Parts Inc. WIX Filtration Corp LLC, Affinia Products Corp LLC and other high quality manufacturers of the Affinia family of brands.
- Camp & Associates, Inc. Press Release
Article Tags: Johnny Sauter, Matt Crafton, Mike Skinner, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, NCWTS, No. 13 Fun Sand/Rodney Atkins-Curb Records Chevy, No. 81 One-Eighty Toyota Tundra, Randy Moss Motorsports, Tayler Malsam, ThorSport Racing
