Johnny Sauter won Friday night’s JAG Metals 350 at Texas Motor Speedway to punch his ticket to the Championship 4 round of the playoffs.  For Sauter, it’s his 3rd win of 2017 and 4th win at Texas.  “It’s unbelievable,” said Sauter.  “I was actually pretty worried about our truck after qualifying – it was pretty loose.  And all we did was lower the track bar a half round.”  Sauter took the lead from John Hunter Nemechek when he pit with 12 laps to go, and held off a hard charging Austin Cindric.  Cindric led a race-high 36 laps.  “It’s personally my best mile-and-a-half race to date,” Cindric said. “Not just finishing position but how we worked through the weekend. … We weren’t the best off the truck and I felt like we were one of the best trucks by the end of the practice so I’m proud of that and proud of my guys.”  Cindric is currently above the cutoff in the playoffs.

John Hunter Nemechek tried to make it on fuel, but ran out and pit with 12 laps to go, and then had a penalty on the pit stop.  “Can you say deja vu all over again?” Nemechek said.  “We’re pretty much in the same spot we were going into Talladega before we advanced to the Round of 6.  We just have a deeper hole to dig ourselves out of now.  Another playoff driver, Ben Rhodes, also had bad luck late in the race.  He had a slow pit stop on lap 126, and had a lug nut issue, so had to come back down pit road.  He finished 18th, two laps down.  “Just a tough night tonight and now we’re outside the playoffs looking in,” Rhodes said.  “We’ll have to make something happen at Phoenix.”

*-Rookie

Driver                                            Pts

1. Johnny Sauter                         ADVANCED
2. Christopher Bell                       3,135
3. Matt Crafton                             3,104
4. Austin Cindric*                          3,085

___________________________  CUTOFF

5.  Ben Rhodes                              3,080
6. John H. Nemechek                    3,046

Credit to www.nascar.com

Written on November 10,2017