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That will change in 2006.
Sauter, who lives in West Salem, Wis., has teamed with car owners Keith Deusenberg and Dwayne Leik in building a new Busch Series team that will run a full schedule in 2006. Sauter, 43, will be the primary driver of the team, running 23 races, while Leik will drive in 10 races.
“Dwayne ran some ARCA and Busch races here and there. It was his dream to have a team and run some races,” said Sauter, who will continue to fly back and forth from West Salem to the team’s headquarters in Asheville, N.C. “He approached me two years ago with this idea, and it’s taken off.”
One big reason the team took off was sponsorship — national sponsorship. On Tuesday, the team announced that Western Union was the team’s primary sponsor.
“To have Western Union, a company that has been around 150 years, as a primary sponsor is a tremendous thing,” Sauter said. “Technically, we signed Western Union in January and have been trying to build a team and keep the sponsor a secret.”
Sauter, who will work closely in all aspects of the new team, said the owners have built a new 10,000 square foot shop in Asheville, and have eight full-time employees at this time. Sauter said they will need each and every one of them as the team has nine new Busch cars to build by the time the 2006 season rolls around in early February.
“I will be helping. I am the driver, but really a hands-on driver with this situation. It’s kind of Dwayne’s theory where we can control our own destiny.”
Sauter has plenty of driving experience. He spent three full seasons and parts of five seasons overall in the Craftsman Truck Series, winning four races and earned 27 top-five finishes in a series in which he won $1.147 million.
He’s spent the last five years running 93 Busch races, including a 16th-place points finish in 2000. Overall, he has four top-five and 20 top-10 Busch finishes and has earned more than $1.5 million.
He’s run in two Nextel Cup races, both in 2002.
“I’m excited to get back to doing it (driving) more than just running six or seven races a year,” said Sauter, whose brother, Johnny, is a Busch Series regular, and another brother, Tim, also runs Busch races on a limited schedule.
“There have been other opportunities, but not what we wanted.
“We had a couple of decent years in Busch Series as well as the Trucks. The face of the sport has changed in that there are a lot of younger drivers and more money in the (Busch) Series. Being able to put the right situation together takes time and the right breaks. To have Western Union, that’s a big key.”
Sauter said it will keep him busy going back-and-forth between his home and the new team’s headquarters, but West Salem, he said, his home.
“I love it back there (West Salem),” said Sauter, who was in Ashville, N.C., late Tuesday night. “The kids love it. My family is from around there. There is nothing like God’s Country.”
Jeff Brown can be reached at (608) 791-8403, or e-mail at jbrown@lacrossetribune.com
