ASAMT Oktoberfest 100 Race Winner Travis Sauter - Doug Hornickel PhotoSteve Carlson Wins the ASAMT Championship

By: Kevin Ramsell
WEST SALEM, WI (Sunday, October 11, 2009) - Travis Sauter finally did something that his grandfather, father, and uncle hoped to do, that is win the Oktoberfest championship. He accomplished that goal today as he won the American Speed Association Kwik Trip Midwest Tour presented by ECHO Outdoor Power Equipment’s Oktoberfest 100 at La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway in West Salem, WI.

He holds off a late challenge from Steve Carlson for the win. Carlson’s second place finish secures the 2009 ASAMT Championship.

“Oh its unbelievable, I wanted it so bad. I wanted this race more than any other race, its unbelievable,” an excited Sauter said in victory lane. Sauter took the lead from his father Tim on lap 30 and held off a late challenge from Carlson.

“I knew he was fast and I told him that if you got a run on me, I am going to let you go if that opportunity came. He got a good run on me, he earned it and I let him go,” Tim Sauter, Travis’s father said after the race. “Its great, we all wanted to do it. We all have been fast here, would have could have should have done it umpteen times, its pretty cool to see him win it.”

Carlson best attempt came with ten laps to go as the two came off of turn four when he got on the inside of Carlson. The two touched causing Carlson’s car climb up Sauter’s car and go on two wheels then coming back down and they both kept going. “He was on the bottom and he must have gotten in me a little bit,” Sauter said. “All I felt was the car get loose a little bit and my spotter told me to keep going so I just kept digging.”

“With about ten laps to go, I didn’t think I was going to win it. I was pointing at the sky and I figured I was going to crash down and be finished,” Carlson said after the race as he was crowned the 2009 ASAMT Champion. “It was still rolling but there was something bent because the car didn’t quite corner after that.”

After that, it was clear sailing for Sauter to go on and take the checkered flag and put the Sauter family name in the Oktoberfest Race Weekend history books as its 40th champion.

Steve Holzhausen finished third, “I thought we had a car to contend with, but when we got in the grass (to avoid a caution) we picked up a bad push after that. It messed up the front end,” he said after the race.

Chris Wimmer was fourth and finished third in the standings. Nathan Haseleu finished fifth but came up 19 points short to Carlson for the championship.

For Carlson, it was his tenth championship in his career but his first under the American Speed Association banner. Its a championship that he wasn’t planning on going for at the beginning of the season, “I started off the season I decided that I was only going to run part-time because at the first race of the year I got a flat and dropped out of the race. So I skipped the next race then I started winning two, three, and four of them and found myself second in points,” Carlson said afterwards. “I thought to myself, well I better go for it.”

Wimmer finished third in points, 65 points behind the leader with Tim Schendel in fourth, 229 points back. Jonathan Eilen finished fifth, 253 points behind the champion.

It was only five points that separated final standings for the Rookie of the Year championship with Jacob Goede winning the title over Nick Neville.

The ASAMT Championship Banquet will take place on Saturday, January 23, 2009. More information will be available later.