Interview /Nashville /June 2002 and Interview following Kentucky

How do you feel about the Sauter family setting a NASCAR Busch Series record by having four family members on the track at the same time…

It should be great weekend. When I looked at the schedule it was one of those dates I looked forward to. It means a lot for me to perform well there. Because those are the same people who watched you from the beginning, at the weekly short tracks. They know you. Some of these places we go to they don’t even know you. But here in Wisconsin the people at the track come there to see you. Me and Johnny raced there before in ASA. I won in the All Pro Race there in the all pro ASA race there in 1994.
• Talk about the switch to Busch…
  Obviously we want to do better but you have to put everything into perspective. This is a brand new team that we brought up from the ASA ranks. It’s a step hill climb and learning curve for us, so we are trying to gel a bunch of new people together and make this happen. We are racing against Rick Hendricks, Jack Rouschs, Joe Gibbs, and Richard Childress’s. We are no longer racing against Saturday night racers. You’re racing against a lot of engineers, GM support, Ford support. It is tough competition.
  • Sum up your season thus far?
    We have come to a point where we can be about a tenth place car, but in order to get better we need to have a sponsor. That way we can go to the wind tunnel, we can budget a R & D program for chassis. Right now we are only two or three tenths off every weekend we get to this point and its like we hit a brick wall. We are just getting beat in a couple of areas. At this point it is impressive that we are where we are because our hands are kind of tied behind our back without having a sponsor. We know what we need work in and we know how to fix it, we just have to hope that AP’s money can hold out long enough for us to get the help we need to propel us to the next level. What about the one race deals? They can expect a lot of good things. It makes the whole team that much more excited. Like they have to perform to keep this deal. I don’t know why that is. We look at it as a marketing tool for those companies. With Loctite, they were here in Nashville for the ARCA race, they sponsor the ARCA series. But they are looking at something different but they really don’t have the money to do it. After that weekend they gave me a call and said, ‘boy if we ever had money to spend you would be the first one we would call.’ Unfortunately what happens with the one race deals is that they are not for a lot of money, to the point where we cant tell if it hurting us or helping us. If we do not put something on the car and we run up front, people might think hey we can help these guys. If you have the stickers sometimes people don’t even think that you need help. It’s hard to know what’s right and what’s perfect. But the bottom line is that if we can have the performance, everything it will speak for itself, and that is what we have turned to now. What are your realistic goals for the next 2 years? 2002 and 2003 we are committed to the Busch Series. That was our intent as of last August. From there I have no idea. Who is your role model? I come from a different time period. I knew driving was what I wanted to do but you had to take proper steps to get there. If you were a young guy, 20 years old you didn’t just get picked to go run a Cup car or a Busch car because you had won a whole lot of go kart championships. If you didn’t know how to build that race car, and if you hadn’t won a weekly championship or an ARTGO, ASA Championship you didn’t get an option to come here to the south. Now days it’s totally turned. How supportive are your brothers? They are supportive. If I need help I can go talk to them guys. And it goes right on down the line to my dad and close family that may not even come to the races. We can help by bouncing ideas off each other. It’s really weird, a lot of families work their whole lives for one member to get a shot at professional racing and here you have three there it’s pretty neat but hard to describe. You treat them just like any other racer. But there is always the idea in the back of your mind about helping them and being concerned about them whatever the case may be. We are pretty much all stand alone. The Childress bunch has pretty much got their own ideas. Nothing has changed between us; we have pretty much been through it before. In order to be good at this every individual has to be so focused. Each car is different; these cars are so aerodynamically different and sensitive that a lot of times their baseline setup isn’t even close to ours. Because the way the body was mounted or something. We kind of swap ideas though and it works out. What does it mean to get to race with your brothers and your dad? Its going to be pretty neat. It will be unique and something, but most importantly it will be fun. The thing is they got the upper hand because they scheduled a two day test there next week, just specifically to shine there. Now I am kicking around trying to figure out how I can get up there. I am usually a better flat track racer and I have had success at Milwaukee, I have sat on the pole and won there before in ASA. They are geared up and pumped up for that deal. It is realistic that we all finish in the Top 10 because all three of us have been in the Top 15 before a couple of times this year. For the limited amount of races Jay’s running that’s awesome. The chances of that happening are tough, but possible. It won’t be a problem for all three of us to make the race though. Dad tests IROC all the time. Years ago when the cup guess didn’t have time to test in Milwaukee, my dad would be the guy who would go up there and test them for them. What is your advice to someone starting out? My advice to someone starting out would be to quit. Buy a boat. It’s a disease, its terrible sometimes. My problem is, I meet a lot of Saturday night racers that work on the car one night a week and they just go out and have fun, that’s great but I cant do that, I have to work on it every night, think about it every day and that’s what you need to be like to beat them guys and then you still struggle because the other guys are doing the same thing. I guess if I was to give any advice. If they are going to do it for real. Be prepared to stay with it and work really hard and stay really focused. And to make sure that they have the financial backing to do it, because if they don’t they wont look good. That’s the one thing that isn’t fair about this sport. I wont say you wont look good, but you can’t make your family suffer by overspending, to try and accomplish something. I think you see this all over the country, these parents think their son is the next Jeff Gordon so they go out and buy these big nice haulers refinance their houses. All of a sudden they don’t make it. I can sit in the stands at your local short track, look at their haulers, look at their cars and tell you who has the ability, just by watching them at the track. Some people will never get a chance. Where I cam from there were some good racers. They might have had more natural ability than me but that’s not what it’s all about. Some of it is paying your dues and staying at it. Would you let your son start racing? Actually my oldest son is supposed to start racing here in the next couple of weeks. We are building the car. It’s just a super stock, sort of like a glorified hobby stock. I told him that if he wants to race he needs to start at that level. Start racing in Wisconsin, where if you get fast times you have to start in the back. There you have to route and gawge your way to the front. If you go to North Carolina and you race Hickory on a Saturday night. If you get the fastest time you start on the pole, and you never learn nothing that way. In Wisconsin that’s a standard deal, they invert the Top 12. I am going to help him but he has to carry the ball. What tracks are you looking forward to? I am looking forward to in the second half of 2002: Nashville, Kentucky, Milwaukee, Phoenix Homestead, IRP. Those are all going to be good racetracks for me. What tracks do you struggle at? I think we are struggling right now at the Charlottes, Dovers, and Darlingtons. Whether it’s a comfort deal for me I don’t know. I am having a hard time figuring out the chassis spring combinations. If I can overcome that I will feel really comfortable about the whole situation. What has your greatest achievement and disappointment been in racing? My greatest accomplishment was winning an ASA Championship in 1999. We overcame a lot of odds, and obstacles. We were written off at one point and we just kept persevering, so that was big. My biggest disappointment? Overall I m not disappointed, I think my biggest disappointments are just a part of life in general. Man I have been luckier than hell. I don’t get down really easy. I have had specific races where I felt like I should have won them, and it was a disappointment because something stupid happened. But that’s about it, just little things that went wrong. But we have won them back along the way. Could 2002 be the year of Tim Sauter? That remains to be seen, depending on how the new bodies and stuff come. In this sport it seems like you have to wait around a few years for it to be your turn and I don’t know if next year will be soon enough. Winston Cup guys in the Busch Series? I know they have a disadvantage because they have a lot more laps. That’s not really a disadvantage to us because it makes the guys over here better racers in the long run and draws a lot more attention over here if they can race well against the Cup guys. So I don’t have a problem with it because when your at this level and you are complaining about guys being better or having an edge, you will have a tough time because everyone is a professional. What is the point’s goal of the AP Team this season? Initially our goal last August when this deal was starting was to be in the Top 15. Right now Top 10 is our goal. We need to be in the Top 10 and I think if we can do that we can be happy. Top 15 was a reasonable goal, but now we are after more. Talk about the road to joining the Busch Series… Well I know what racers are feeling because it was a long road to haul. When we came to ASA, we came from the weekly levels. And the first couple of years we got beat up and bounced around. I would go home and think why am I doing this, this is stupid. I have won all of these championships back home; I can just go back there and be happy. But there is always something pushing you to compete in the next level. So I lived through that in ASA, because there was a big difference because all of a sudden we were traveling. But it’s just like it moving to this level. Every time I go home I fell good if I run good and I fell bad If I run poorly sometimes I want to go back to ASA, kick some butt and relax a little. It’s the same thing. We are prepared for this step, we thought it out more. When I sat down with Alec in 1997 I had run a couple of races for him and I asked where do you see yourself in 5 years. He said I see myself in NASCAR somewhere down the road. We set that goal and we hit it. We far exceeded his wildest expectations of where we could be. He was at Dover and I asked his I said Alec this is your fault it’s what you wanted and now your deal. Pinsonneault is a successful businessman he has 700-800 employees he is very similar to those guys. But they have the competitiveness. They are just real Saturday night racers and the best thing about it is we aren’t sitting in a pressure cooker with a sponsor. Who are your favorite drivers? Dick trickles, Dave Marcus’s. Who built their own cars and raced their own cars, those are my role models. Alan Kulwicki, Mark Martin, Rusty Wallace. They all went to WI because it was a faster learning curve. You could race so many nights a week. They were my role models and I always felt that I couldn’t go to the next level unless I duplicated those tasks back home winning championships.