Sauter

A smooth and steady race earned us a 14th-place finish in the first race at the new Kansas Speedway last Saturday afternoon.

The Kansas Speedway is a beautiful new facility. But, I’ll tell you one thing -- it’s tough to pass on this track. Track position played a major role in where you finished Saturday. The car was tight most of the afternoon, but the guys kept working on the car each pit stop to get it better.

I guess all-in-all it was a pretty good weekend for our team. The race fans in Kansas really made us feel welcome and the stands were packed both days.

With a purse of over $1.1 million, the race had one of the most competitive fields of cars thus far in the 2001 season. There was a total of 46 cars in the garage for qualifying Friday afternoon.

We were all given an open test time Thursday with almost four hours of track time to work on our cars for qualifying.

After an additional practice session Friday morning, we qualified for the starting field. I posted a fast lap of 170.266 mph to earn the 23rd starting position. The qualifying was so competitive that the top 28 drivers were separated by less than one second.

Many of the other drivers, myself included, felt as though the track would be a one-groove track during the early portion of the race. We all hoped a second groove would come in by the end of the race.

We raced single file for much of the first 50 laps. We were able to gain seven positions by lap 55, mostly during a quick pit stop -- our first stop of the day -- by the Quality Stores pit crew.

We continued to maintain our position on the track and were running 15th at the halfway point of the race.

On lap 170, I moved into the 13th position. Two laps later, a caution period for oil in Turn 3 gave everyone a final chance to pit.

We restarted the race in 14th on lap 177. We held on for the final 23 laps to post a 14th-place finish.

The 14th-place finish kept us in the 17th overall position in the Busch standings.

The next stop for us is in our neck of the woods for our second visit of the season to Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C., next Saturday. We look forward to this weekend and a good performance. With only four races remaining on the schedule after Charlotte, our team is focused on putting together a string of strong finishes to end the season.

Jay Sauter drives the No. 43 car in the NASCAR Busch Series Grand National Division and submits a weekly diary to ESPN.com throughout the season.