Johnny Sauter celebrates with his team

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Johnny Sauter finally found a way to keep Kyle Busch from winning a race: by putting the bumper to him.

Sauter nudged Busch aside with two laps to go to score his third career NASCAR Camping World Truck Series victory Saturday at the Kroger 250 at Martinsville Speedway and secure the series point lead for the first time in his career.

Ron Hornaday, Jr. was third followed by Kevin Harvick, who made a remarkable rally from two laps down to finish fourth. Timothy Peters rounded out the top five.

Sauter, who’s wife is expecting their second child on Monday, scored a clean sweep for the weekend, taking the pole, the win and leading a race-high 71 laps. He’s now the first truck series regular to score a victory in the series this season, and now leads the standings by five points over Matt Crafton.

“This is just a huge win, I can’t believe I finally won here, this place has been so rough on me and we’ve always been fast here,” said Sauter. “That’s the way racing’s supposed to be, the tires fall off and you get to bump and grind a little bit. Awesome win.”

“I think Kyle got into the corner and got loose, swung the back around and tried to come back down and I was there and I made contact with him. It’s pretty cool when you can beat Kyle Busch. It’s been a good weekend for me, I got a baby being born on Monday. Everybody told me when you have babies, you start slowing down, but we’ve only gotten better.”

Busch looked to have the race in the bag at after passing Austin Dillon for the top spot with 30 laps to go and eventually moving out to a four truck-length lead over Sauter, until Matt Lofton spun with 10 laps to go to bring out the 13th and final caution.

On the restart, Busch got a good jump on the green flag but Sauter did as well, reeling the leader in as Busch struggled to find grip with his worn tires.

With two laps to go, Sauter closed in an got his nose under Busch’s bumper in turn two, edging Busch’s Toyota Tundra aside and pulling even with him on the backstretch.

By the time the field came to the white flag, Sauter had position on Busch and cleared him going into turn one.

Busch tried to put the bumper to Sauter coming through the final turn, but came up a few feet short as Sauter pulled away out of turn four to score the victory.

Coming into Saturday race with five victories already including a truck series win in Phoenix, Busch had yet to win at Martinsville in seven starts, his best finish being a runner-up to Hornaday last October.

“Just got beat there at the end. Burnt the front tires off of it I guess,” said Busch. “We got away from Johnny (Sauter) a little bit there.  We were kind of racing through traffic a little bit.  He got to my back bumper and we could at least get away from him.  The tires were still good there, but then once we got back going green on that final restart we just didn’t have any turn left and kind of got run over -- gave it away.”

Harvick’s fourth-place finish capped an amazing comeback after going two laps pitting to fix a camber issue early in the race.

After picking up two “Lucky Dog” passes, Harvick was back on the lead lap by lap 165 and managed to fight his way to third with 30 laps to go.

Shortly after the final restart, Hornaday passed Harvick for third in Harvick’s own truck, giving Kevin Harvick Inc. two trucks finishing in the top five.

“My team did a good job of just salvaging what we had to do to make the tires survive,” said Harvick. “It was just a terrible tire, there’s no rubber on the race track - who knows what tomorrow (the Sprint Cup race) is going to bring, it’s just going to be about survival

“These are the day that you’ve got to do to have championships teams, and the 2 and 33 doing what they had to do survive was impressive - even though we want to win and this has been one of our best race tracks, today just wasn’t our day but we salvaged two top-fives out of it.”

Cole Whitt, Dillon, Ricky Carmichael Brendan Gaughan and Max Papis rounded out the top ten. Only two trucks – Jeffrey Earnhardt and James Buescher – failed to finish the event.

Results

FIN	ST	CAR	DRIVER	MAKE	SPONSOR	PTS/BNS	LAPS	STATUS
1	1	13	Johnny Sauter	Chevrolet	SafeAuto Ins. Co. / 104 WTQR Country / Curb Records	48/5	250	Running
2	5	18	Kyle Busch	Toyota	Toyota / Fas Mart	0	250	Running
3	10	33	Ron Hornaday	Chevrolet	Cooked Perfect Meatballs	42/1	250	Running
4	3	2	Kevin Harvick	Chevrolet	Tide / Kroger	0	250	Running
5	12	17	Timothy Peters	Toyota	Autism Speaks/ AutosByNelson.com	39/0	250	Running
6	2	60	Cole Whitt *	Chevrolet	Red Bull / Van-Go Rentals	38/0	250	Running
7	4	3	Austin Dillon	Chevrolet	Bass Pro Shops / Remington Arms / Tracker	38/1	250	Running
8	20	4	Ricky Carmichael	Chevrolet	Monster Energy	37/1	250	Running
9	31	62	Brendan Gaughan	Toyota	South Point Hotel & Casino	36/1	250	Running
10	11	9	Max Papis	Toyota	GEICO	34/0	250	Running
11	7	88	Matt Crafton	Chevrolet	Tarkett / Menards	34/1	250	Running
12	27	7	Miguel Paludo *	Toyota	Stemco / Duroline	33/1	250	Running
13	30	29	Parker Kligerman *	Dodge	Penske Truck Rental	31/0	250	Running
14	15	30	Todd Bodine	Toyota	Germain.com	30/0	250	Running
15	18	32	Brad Sweet	Chevrolet	Great Clips	29/0	250	Running
16	14	92	Clay Rogers	Chevrolet	fleetHQ.com / BTS Tire & Wheel Distributors	28/0	250	Running
17	23	22	Joey Coulter *	Chevrolet	Richard Childress Racing / Darrell Gwynn Foundation	27/0	250	Running
18	21	20	Johanna Long *	Toyota	Panhandle Grading and Paving	26/0	250	Running
19	32	07	Caleb Roark	Chevrolet	Boys & Girls Club of Kingsport	25/0	250	Running
20	13	5	Travis Kvapil	Toyota	International Trucks / Monaco RV	24/0	250	Running
21	22	66	Justin Marks	Chevrolet	GoPro	23/0	250	Running
22	34	23	Jason White	Chevrolet	GunBroker.com	22/0	249	Running
23	25	197	Matt Lofton	Toyota	Strutmasters.com	21/0	249	Running
24	16	46	Craig Goess *	Toyota	Greenville Toyota of N.C.	20/0	248	Running
25	19	15	Dusty Davis *	Toyota	Vision Airlines / Emerald Coast	19/0	245	Running
26	29	81	David Starr	Toyota	Zachry	18/0	243	Running
27	33	57	Norm Benning	Chevrolet	Norm Benning Racing	17/0	243	Running
28	35	10	Chase Mattioli *	Ford	College Complete	16/0	237	Running
29	24	93	Shane Sieg	Chevrolet	S&W Services	15/0	232	Running
30	9	8	Nelson Piquet Jr. *	Chevrolet	Qualcomm / Autotrac	14/0	207	Running
31	26	51	Justin Johnson *	Toyota	Vision Airlines / Wounded Warrior Project	13/0	202	Running
32	8	77	Justin Lofton	Toyota	Lofton Cattle	12/0	160	Running
33	17	39	Ryan Sieg	Chevrolet	S&W Towing	11/0	142	Radiator
34	28	1	Jeffrey Earnhardt *	Chevrolet	Fuel Doctor USA	10/0	134	Wreck
35	6	31	James Buescher	Chevrolet	Wolfpack Rentals	9/0	134	Wreck

* Denotes Rookie