Follow us on

Listen live to Atlanta's breaking news, severe weather, & traffic online

recent on-air advertisers

Now Playing

News/Talk WSB
Listen live to ...

Doug "Fireball" Turnbull's Race Blog

Posted: 1:44 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013

NCWTS Daytona capsule: Sauter starts season off with bang 

By Doug Turnbull

 

We're going to try out a new way to recap races in 2013. Enjoy. 

Tweet summary (140 characters or less): Last lap crash hands Sauter Daytona win. Bad luck bites Kyle again. Trucks race better than cars. #DoubleFile #BigPack Two GA drivers top 15.

 

Handsome Boy Modeling School Stud of the Race: Sauter, who started in the back after making post-qualifying adjustments to the truck and powered to the front. With less than 30 laps remaining, he wondered aloud on his radio how he’d be able to get there, because the two lines were not moving. As Borat said, “Well, he get this.” Sauter wins the race after John King wrecked him out of the lead in this race one year ago and won it himself.

 

North Korean Missile Dud of the Race: Clay Greenfield, the little known driver who led practice Thursday night, timed into the field 19th, was supremely confident about his truck and chances of winning, and who fell out early with mechanical trouble He returned to the race laps down and out of contention.

 

“Where Did He Come?” Dark Horse Trophy: Tucker, GA’s Ryan Sieg dodged a couple of wrecks and hung in the deep draft all race to finish 10th – a rare accomplishment for his family’s small RSS Racing team. Honorable mention in this goes to Conyers, GA’s Chris Cockrum, who split the middle of the race-ending crash to finish 15th.

 

Head-scratcher: Brendan Gaughan, who made a move just after halfway in the race to try and break the monotony of the race, only to help trigger the first and biggest wreck of the race.

 

Ghost Story: Darrell Wallace Jr.’s big debut with Kyle Busch Motorsports in Trucks was non-descript. The only time the SPEED telecast mentioned him is when he spun James Buescher on pit road. He kept his No. 54 clean the rest of the night and finished 12th.  

 

Georgia, Georgia: We already mentioned Sieg (10th) and Cockrum (15th). John Wes Townley got caught up in the race's 2nd-to-last wreck and finished 21st, as did Max Gresham, who ended the race 24th. 

 

Lug nuts:

 

- Cockrum told me he used up his brakes trying to stay back in the draft, because he did not want to put himself in the middle of the tense action until the end. He rode most of the race half-throttle and half on the brake and had to lay back on the last restart, because his Truck was so good in the draft and he had no brakes left to woe it down. When have you ever heard of a driver using up their brakes on a superspeedway? Weird.

 

- Youngster Ross Chastain is running a limited schedule in the No. 19 for Brad Keselowski Racing this season with his sponsor, National Watermelon Board. As a joke, Ron Hornaday’s wife, Lindy, painted up a hat and some Vans slip-on shoes like watermelons and gave them to Chastain.

 

- NASCAR has to be glad that there is one race between the great action the Trucks displayed and the wildcard that the new Gen-6 cars will show in Sunday’s Daytona 500.

 

- Jeb Burton did very well in his first race with Turner Scott Motorsports in the No. 4 Chevy. He hung tall in the front of the lead draft most of the race and finished 6th.

 

 Next: I rubbed my eyes when I saw this one…just like last year, the Trucks don’t race again until April at Martinsville. Talk about juxtaposition with Daytona. Enjoy the offseason…er…five weeks off, guys. 

Doug Turnbull

About Doug Turnbull

Doug has been an Atlanta traffic reporter and producer as part of WSB's award-winning team since 2004 and has been covering NASCAR the news team and since then, as well.

Connect with Doug Turnbull on:TwitterFacebook

Send Doug Turnbull an email.