NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series
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TRUCKS: Sauter Sweeps Texas
Johnny Sauter made the race-winning pass with 11 laps to go at Texas Motor Speedway...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted November 02, 2012   Fort Worth, TX
Johnny Sauter passed Parker Kligerman with 11 laps to go to win tonight’s WinStar World Casino 350 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Sauter, who won at Texas earlier this year, claimed his second victory of the season and sixth of his career as he put the No. 13 ThorSport Racing Toyota into victory lane, with Kligerman holding on to second. Nelson Piquet Jr. was third, followed by Kyle Busch and Ty Dillon.

Points leader James Buescher finished 11th. Unofficially, Buescher leads Dillon by 15 points with two races left in the season.

“I’m so proud of this team,” said Sauter, who has finished 20th or worse in eight of 20 races this season. “It would be so easy to hang our heads after the season that we’ve had, but another win, it’s cool and we just need to finish strong.”

Piquet started from the pole, flanked by teammate Buescher, as Turner Motorsports took three of the top four spots in qualifying.

Piquet took the lead at the start and by Lap 25, he was 2.84 seconds ahead of Buescher, the two Turner trucks clearly the class of the field in the early going.

The first caution came on Lap 32, when Ryan Blaney blew a right-front tire and hit the wall on the frontstretch.

The leaders all pitted under caution, Piquet holding the lead over Buescher and Joey Coulter.

The green came out on Lap 36, with Coulter trying unsuccessfully to go three-wide for the lead. Instead, it was Buescher who took the lead from Piquet.

An engine failure in German Quiroga’s Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota brought out caution No. 2 on Lap 66. Under the caution, Busch’s truck stalled on pit road, its battery dead and electrical issues present.

Once again, the two Turner trucks were out front, but on the restart, Buescher got hit from behind by Matt Crafton and started to slide back through the field as Piquet sped away. Buescher’s right-rear quarter was bent out and he soon began complaining of a vibration as well.

Up front, Sauter began to close on Piquet as the race passed the 90-lap mark.

After a dozen or so laps of tight racing, Sauter took the lead on Lap 100.

Green-flag stops began shortly thereafter, and when they cycled through, Parker Kligerman was out front because he took only two tires on his stop.

With 25 laps to go, Kligerman led Sauter by 3.286 seconds.

But Sauter, who had four fresh tires to Kligerman’s two, started closing rapidly and with 11 laps to go made the race-winning pass.

For Kligerman, it was his fourth runner-up finish of the year.

“I hate finishing second,” he said. “This truck hates finishing second. Every time we’ve brought this truck out, it’s finished fourth or second. It wants to go to victory lane, but sadly, we’re going to retire this baby after this race.”

As for Buescher, he was philosophical about the damage his truck suffered on the Lap 70 restart

“The truck went really tight, just couldn’t turn, couldn’t run the bottom,” Buescher said. “Lost a lot of speed, got really draggy and never got a caution to do any repairs. … Unfortunate, and fortunate we didn’t lose more spots than that and came home with a decent finish and didn’t give up too much.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
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