 |
|
 |
ThorSport Headlines
Go Back To Previous Page
04-23-10
ThorSport Racing Drivers to Visit the Ronald McDonald House in Kansas City
|
ThorSport Racing drivers Matt Crafton and Johnny Sauter will make an appearance at the Ronald McDonald House in Kansas City on Friday April 30. The NASCAR Foundation is partnering with Sprint and Turner Construction to build a playground in honor of Tom Murphy, the Sprint vice president who passed away in an accident one year ago. ThorSport Racing is assisting with the build by donating over two tons of FunSand colored play sand.
Crafton and Sauter will tour the Ronald McDonald House and the playground site then meet with the children and their families.
“This is a really great cause and we’re happy to be a part of it,” said Johnny Sauter, driver of the No. 13 In Country Television/Curb Records Chevrolet. “Tom was a great guy and he did a lot to help move NASCAR racing forward. We were all shocked when we heard the news last spring about his accident, but this is a great way for the sport to honor his memory and all he did. I’m looking forward to getting there and seeing the kids and meeting their families. I’m sure there will be some NASCAR fans among them so it will be fun to talk racing with them and give them a chance to think about something fun for a while.”
Fun Sand colored play sand can be used both indoors and outdoors, and thanks to the Dust Lock Formula additive provides a clean, dustless play environment. It can be molded into shapes without water and its brilliant blue or purple color will not run or stain. Its lifelike textural experience is ideal for childhood development and it is also perfect for non-traditional uses such as in reptile enclosures.
“We’re honored the NASCAR Foundation thought high enough about us to reach out and ask us to participate,” said Rick Noon, director of research and development for ThorWorks, manufacturer of Fun Sand. “It’s a great product that allows families and businesses the chance to have a traditional sandbox for kids to play in without all of the mess that goes along with it. It will be a great fit on the playground at the Ronald McDonald House and we hope it helps bring a little enjoyment to some families that are going through a rough time.”
Fun Sand is available at stores nationwide. For more information, log on to www.funsand.net.
02-09-10
Easy Transitional Cabinetry’s etc. Brand Cabinets and SouthernCandle.com Join ThorSport Racing for Daytona
ThorSport Racing has joined forces with Easy Transitional Cabinetry and SouthernCandle.com for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series’ season-opening NextEra Energy 250 at Daytona International Speedway. etc. and it’s EasytoInstall.com website will be the primary sponsor of the No. 98 Chevrolet driven by Landon Cassill and share co-primary status on the team’s No. 13 truck driven by Johnny Sauter along with Curb Records’ recording artist Tim McGraw and his new album Southern Voice. Southern Candle will be an associate sponsor on both trucks.
“We are really excited to be a part of the ThorSport Racing team heading into Daytona,” said J.D. Brown, CEO of the Expo Holdings, Inc., parent company of Easy Transitional Cabinetry. “We really want to generate some buzz around our new etc. (pronounced “et cetera”) brand cabinets and our EasytoInstall.com website, and when we were presented with this opportunity we jumped at it. NASCAR racing is really new to us, but we know how exciting it is and we can’t wait to see our trucks in action on Friday night. We’ve got a couple of great young drivers in Johnny Sauter and Landon Cassill representing us, and we can’t wait to see them take us to the front.”
etc. cabinets are a do-it-yourself system that allows home owners, apartment managers, businesses, hotels, hospitals, and any other facility that uses wooden cabinetry, to easily update the facing of their cabinets without the need – and expense – of hiring a contractor. The patent-pending etc. system easily allows anyone to slide out the front component of their cabinets, the drawers or the doors, and replace them with new ones.
“We are located in North Wilkesboro and we know all about the heritage of NASCAR racing in the south and we’re excited to be a part of it,” said Randy Whittington, CEO of Southern Candle Inc. “We designed our candles to remind people of southern life through the colors and the scents we have available. We’d like to invite any race fan out there that wants to remember spending days in the kitchen as a kid helping grandma bake an apple pie or walking through the woods with dad to log on to our website southerncandle.com and enjoy.”
“Our hometown, North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, is where many believe stock car racing was really created back in the 1940s and 1950s,” said Gary Jordan, president of Southern Candle. “We believe in racing as a way of life and as a marketing platform, and we’re confident ThorSport Racing is going to deliver for us.”
Southern Candle Inc. produces premium hand-made candles in dozens of scents. In all, nearly 500 different products are available on the company’s website, SouthernCandle.com, and in several retail outlets nationwide.
For more information, visit www.EasytoInstall.com or www.SouthernCandle.com.
01-25-10
Stability is Key Word for ThorSport Racing as 2010 Approaches
With major personnel movement throughout most of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series teams during the off-season making news, one team that has been notably silent on that topic is ThorSport Racing. Fresh off a season that saw Matt Crafton score a career-best second-place finish in the championship standings and teammate Johnny Sauter score his first career series win en route to a sixth-place finish overall and the Raybestos Rookie of the Year award, both drivers return for 2010 with the core of their teams intact.
Crafton returns to the seat of the No. 88 Menard Chevrolet with crew chief Bud Haefele calling the shots for the fifth consecutive season. Together they have scored one win (Charlotte 2008), 25 top-five finishes, 53 top-ten finishes, two poles, and two top-five finishes in the championship standings. Haefele spent many years building cars to race the short tracks in northern Ohio before building an ARCA Series car, earning the pole with driver Rick Groetsch at Flat Rock in 1998 along with three top-five finishes in just five races. Before joining ThorSport, Haefele worked with the Liberty Racing team and with Kevin Harvick, Inc. before making the move to be Crafton’s crew chief in 2006.
“Working with Bud is pretty easy because we have the same type of personality,” Crafton said. “When we’re in the garage after a practice run and I am explaining what I think it’s going to take to make the truck better, we’re on the same page. We think alike, we talk alike, we laugh at the same things and we both want to win more than anything. That’s what makes us a good team – we both know what each other is thinking before we have to say it.”
Sauter teamed up with long-time friend - and sometimes crew chief - Joe Shear, Jr. in the second half of the 2009 season. After watching their respective fathers battle against each other week in and week out on the Wisconsin short tracks, the duo have worked together frequently after moving into the NASCAR ranks. After joining the No. 13 FunSand/Curb Records Chevrolet team for the Chicagoland race in August, Shear led Sauter to his first series win just four races later at Las Vegas, six top-five finishes, eight top-ten finishes, and one pole. He also led the charge from eleventh in the standings after Chicagoland to sixth at the end of the year.
“I think it all comes down to confidence,” Sauter said, referencing his relationship to Shear. “The first time we ever worked together we just hit it off. When I get in the truck with Joe working on it I know it’s going to be right. I think some of that goes to watching his dad race against my dad and knowing he and I have very similar backgrounds.”
Notes: Johnny Sauter and his wife Cortney welcomed their first child, Penn Joseph Sauter, on January 13. Little Penn Joseph weighed in at an impressive 8 pounds, five ounces. Both mother and son are now home resting comfortably … Sauter’s crew chief Joe Shear Jr. and his wife Chrandra were married on January 17 just outside of Greensboro, North Carolina … No. 88 Menards Chevy crew member Kitrick Schrader, who was injured in a snowmobile accident on January 9, is now resting comfortably and in stable condition at Cleveland Metro Hospital. Schrader has undergone numerous surgeries since the accident to repair bone and arterial damage in his left leg.
Next Race: The 2010 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series kicks off with the NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona International Speedway on Friday February 12. The first practice is a 90-minute session scheduled for 6 P.M. on Wednesday February 10, with the final two-hour session slated for Thursday February 11 at 9 A.M. The 36-truck starting field will be determined in two-lap qualifying runs at 6 P.M. on Thursday evening. The eleventh annual NextEra Energy Resources 250 will go green shortly after 8 P.M. on Friday night; it can be seen live on SPEED and heard live on select affiliates of the Motor Racing Network and on Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 128.
01-13-10
ThorSport Racing Crew Member Kitrick Schrader Injured in Accident
ThorSport Racing crew member Kitrick Schrader was injured in a snowmobile accident Saturday January 9. Schrader was en route to meet friends for a late night snowmobile ride when he collided with a fire hydrant hidden in drifting snow, causing serious injuries to his left leg, hip, and pelvis.
Schrader is a native of Ft. Wayne, Indiana and a current resident of Sandusky, Ohio. He serves as a fabricator and general mechanic in the shop and is the rear tire carrier on Matt Crafton’s pit crew at the track.
After the accident, Schrader was air lifted from Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky to Cleveland Metro, a level one trauma care center.
“We were shocked at the news, and we ask that everyone in the NASCAR community keep Kitrick in their thoughts and prayers,” said ThorSport Racing team manager David Pepper. “We’ve all been out to visit him and have already heard from a lot of our friends in the Truck Series offering their support. We’re behind him 110 percent. We know it’s going to be a long rehab process, probably ten to twelve months. All of us on the ThorSport team want him to know we love him like a brother and he’s still a very important part of the team.”
Pepper said that Schrader’s absence has already had an impact on the team.
“The guys in the shop are a tight bunch,” he said. “Everyone does whatever it takes to get the trucks ready to race. Kitrick is a talented mechanic and fabricator and much more. Whether it was installing a windshield or working on crush panels, it didn’t matter. If it needed to get done, he’d be helping. We’re just now starting to realize just how many different things he would work on.”
Cards and other well wishes can be sent to:
Kitrick Schrader
C/O ThorSport Racing
PO Box 2218
Sandusky, Ohio 44870
09-17-09
Trying To Tame The Trucks?
Written by Lindsey Marks, www.hardcoreracefans.com
There is nothing I enjoy more than sitting down on my couch with some good food and maybe some friends and watching a NASCAR race. Well, other than actually being at the track of course.
I am certainly a fan of the Sprint Cup Series but lately my favorite races to watch have been Camping World Truck Series events. The trucks are known to beat and bang on each other like it’s a street stock race at a local short track. They take NASCAR excitement to a level that the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series’ have not seen in quite some time.
Last weekend’s race at Gateway was a huge disappointment for me because of the punishment NASCAR handed down to Matt Crafton after the two late race incidents he was involved in.
With only a handful of laps to go, Crafton tried to go underneath both Todd Bodine and race leader Ron Hornaday on two separate restarts. Both of the drivers came down on him and when their left rear made contact with his right front they both went spinning and ended up wrecking.
It is clear from every angle, including Crafton’s in-car camera, that he did not come up into either driver.
Both Bodine and Hornaday are seasoned veterans of the sport and should have known better than to try to intimidate Crafton by squeezing him down to the bottom of the track. They also should have known that he was racing for a win and the championship against points leader Hornaday and no one would have lifted and given up the spot with those things on the line.
NASCAR penalized Matt Crafton by putting him at the end of the longest line for “rough driving” after the two late race incidents he was involved in. Max Dolder Photo/HardcoreRaceFans.com
NASCAR was completely wrong to penalize Crafton by putting him at the end of the longest line for “rough driving”. Rough driving makes the Truck Series, and local short track racing, so exciting. In my opinion, it would be nice to see the same kind of racing in the Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series like you used to.
Plus, Crafton is Hornaday’s closest competitor in this championship hunt. While the Sprint Cup Series points are closer together due to the Chase rules, the Truck Series is pretty spaced out and this year’s championship is quite boring to be honest. It was good to see Crafton gain some gound on him and I’d like to see him get even closer so that it will at least be a decent fight for the title.
Looking ahead to this weekend at New Hampshire, Crafton is still a distant 197 points behind Hornaday in the point standings. Mike Skinner, who won the Gateway race after Crafton was penalized and sent to the rear, is closing in on Crafton for 2nd place. There is only 16 points separating the two drivers so that will end up being a good battle but no one really enjoys a battle for second place. Plus, 4th place driver Brian Scott is over 200 points behind Skinner so there is no hope of that battle getting more exciting by adding more drivers.
NASCAR really should have thought of all of this when they decided to penalize Crafton for something that was not even his fault. If Crafton had won he would have been even closer to Hornaday going into this weekend’s race. With only seven races left in the Truck schedule Crafton is running out of time to challenge for the championship.
Sure it is costly and potentially dangerous for accidents to occur, but NASCAR needs to recognize that there is a need for the sport to have on-track action like it used to have in the earlier years.
With changes like the implementation of the COT and NASCAR’s decision to penalize for “rough driving” that is not all that rough, I am worried about the future of this sport. I do not want to see NASCAR go the way of Formula 1 and IndyCar. This sport was created by moonshiners and that is what makes it so special.
The NASCAR higher-ups need to remember the heritage and remember what made this sport an American favorite because it sure wasn’t bogus penalties and mysterious debris cautions.
I hope that when the trucks take on Loudon this weekend that they live up to their reputation for being the rough-and-tumble NASCAR series because it would be a shame for them to be tame.
09-17-09
McDowell To Make Truck Series Start with ThorSport Racing at New Hampshire
Michael McDowell will make his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start of the season for ThorSport Racing in the Heluva! Good 200 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Saturday.
McDowell has made previous starts at New Hampshire in Cup and Nationwide Series competition. He owns five top-10 finishes in Nationwide Series competition in '09. McDowell will drive the No. 98 Perkins Police Silverado, in an effort to raise awareness of D.A.R.E. and the department's Camp Pride program, designed to promote positive choices among early teenagers. ThorSport Racing is located in Perkins Township in Sandusky, OH.
"I'm really looking forward to racing again at New Hampshire," McDowell said. "I'm thankful to ThorSport Racing for the opportunity. I've always felt comfortable at New Hampshire. I love short-track racing, especially on the flat tracks, and it's always a great show for the fans, with a lot of of beatin' and bangin'. Matt and Johnny (ThorSport Racing teammates Crafton and Sauter, respectively) have run up front all year, and I expect to do
that on Saturday, also."
Joining McDowell for the race on Saturday will be crew chief Tommy Baldwin Jr., who has guided drivers to numerous Sprint Cup Series wins, including the crown jewel Daytona 500.
"I'm excited to see what we can do on Saturday," Baldwin said. "I love watching truck series racing, and am looking forward to being a part of it. It's great racing. I always enjoy coming back to New Hampshire, and consider it one of my home tracks (Baldwin is a native of Long Island). Hopefully, we can win the race and make this visit extra special."
SPEED TV coverage of the Heluva! Good 200 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway begins at 2:30pm EST on Saturday.
|
|
|
