Race 2 Win: Golden Corral 500 - Johnny Sauter Notes

Nextel Cup Series

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Golden Corral 500 - Johnny Sauter Notes

Johnny Sauter
America Online Racing
Event Preview Fact Sheet
Event/Date: Golden Corral 500/March 14, 2004
Venue: Atlanta Motor Speedway

NOTES:

This Week’s Race Car (chassis No. 124) is a brand new race car that will see it’s first race in the Golden Corral 500 this weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Testing, testing…Johnny Sauter and the AOL Racing team tested chassis No.124 at Atlanta Motor Speedway March 2 in preparation for the Golden Corral 500.

Testing, testing, part two…Sauter tested his No. 27 Kleenex Busch Series car at Bristol Motor Speedway March 11 in preparation for the March 27 running of the Sharpie Professional 250.

First for the Rookie…the Golden Corral will be Johnny Sauter’s first NASCAR NEXTEL Cup event at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

TV and Radio coverage…The Golden Corral 500 will be broadcast live on FOX and PRN beginning at 1 p.m. EDT, Sunday, March 14. Qualifying is scheduled for Friday, March 12, and can been seen live on SPEED beginning at 3 p.m. EDT.

JOHNNY SAUTER QUOTES:
“We tested Atlanta and ended up pretty good on our race setup. We need to work a bit more on our qualifying setup, but the AOL Chevrolet should be good on Sunday. Atlanta is really fast, with a lot of different racing grooves come race time, so it makes for an exciting race. It has to be one of the better races for the fans to watch. They’ve had some great finishes at Atlanta in the past few years, including Kevin Harvick’s first Cup win in 2001. Kevin (Hamlin) was with Harvick for that win in Atlanta, maybe he can lead me to my first Cup victory there as well.”

CREW CHIEF KEVIN HAMLIN QUOTES:
“Working with Johnny has been good. He’s a fast learner and has had several good runs with his Busch car, so that helps our Cup effort for Sunday. I wish the Busch Series was going to be racing with us in Atlanta because we could have used Johnny’s seat time in the Busch car to help learn a lot more for our race on Sunday.

“This aero package with the smaller spoiler will probably cause a lot more headaches at Atlanta, a higher speed track where you get into the corners a lot faster. They’ve tried to compensate by making the tire stickier which will hold the track better. We’ve seen some pretty good racing this year among a bunch of different teams so I think once we get things worked out here a little bit and get settled in on a race setup during Saturday practice that we’ll probably be pretty good. On the March 2 Atlanta test

“The AOL Chevrolet was pretty good in race trim. We had pretty good balance and got it to where Johnny was comfortable with it. But that’s going to be a moving target because, when we started the test, there was a lot of rubber on the track by lunch time and the warmer it got, the slicker the track got and the more the car slid around. With a lot of cars and trucks, the track is going to get rubbered up pretty quick so we’ll be searching around to run on the asphalt without rubber on it. The groove is going to be pretty wide from top to bottom. When we went into qualifying trim, we didn’t have much success at all. We were pretty loose and never could get the balance to where we needed it. We’re going through a bunch of notes and test data now to figure out how to make the car stick better when we get there for the race.”

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