Elliott staves off late bid by Sauter
MARTINSVILLE, Va. Chase Elliott had spent lap after lap pursuing race-leader Christopher Bell, trying to find, or create, a way around him.
Turned out, he didn’t have to do a thing.
Elliott grabbed the lead when Bell wiggled with 17 laps to go and held off teammate and Johnny Sauter of Necedah, Wis., to win the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Alpha Energy Solutions 250 race at Martinsville Speedway on Saturday.
“I was trying,” Elliott said. “There were a couple times I really tried to pass him and got into him pretty hard and was trying to kind of root him up out of the way. He was doing a really good job of controlling his momentum and my momentum coming to his bumper.
“His bumper was get- ting awfully blue as the day went on. I was going to try to be a little more aggressive if I got back to him, but had a little help from his misfortune, which happens. I’ve been on both ends of it, so we’ll take it.”
Elliott, who lost out to Sauter on the 0.526-mile oval last October, held off one challenge from the defending series champion and pulled away for his second victory in 12 career starts in the series. Sauter finished second, followed by Bell.
Sauter, who unlike Elliott is a contender for the truck series title, played it safe, and might have been kicking himself later.
“To be completely honest with you, before that last caution came out, there was an opportunity to get by Chase, and I cut him some slack,” said Sauter.
“I should have probably went ahead and did what I needed to do.”