Johnny Sauter and his 15-year-old son, Penn, hope to keep a little more distance between themselves at Slinger than their last time out together.
SLINGER – Johnny Sauter is used to coaching 15-year-old son Penn on the racetrack, Penn is used to having the voice of a 47-year-old NASCAR truck and ASA champion in his ear.
Now they’re competing against each other for only the second time, and in one of the premier super late model races in the country, the Slinger Nationals at Slinger Speedway.
Ideally it will go smoother than their first outing together.
“I raced against him up in Norway,” Penn said, referring to an ARCA Midwest Tour race at Norway Speedway, just across the border in Upper Michigan. “We made contact up there. Obviously a lot of people know that.
“Just trying to run my own race is going to be important, and we’ll just see how it goes.”
Their two cars were parked next to each other in the pits on practice day before the July 8, 200-lap main event, Penn’s orange-trimmed black No. 5 owned by Johnny and Johnny’s orange No. 5 campaigned by longtime owner/crew chief Richie Wauters.
Under their skins, the cars are different. Although they started practice with similar setups the two could diverge based on what works for each over hundreds of practice and racing laps.
Interestingly Penn has had better performance at Slinger than his dad. He ran in the top five in two late model races in 2024.
Johnny has been coming to the Nationals on and off for decades, but with all the races he has won elsewhere, he has been average at best on this high-banked quarter-mile. A fresh look at the track through Wauters’ eyes, Sauter hopes, will help.
“I think I DNF’d the last two years even before halfway,” he said. “What I know now, looking at things, I probably have not come here with my best package.
“I had so much success at all these other tracks that I always tried to apply it to here, and this is different. I’m a slow learner. It took me years to figure out what this place is all to itself, like what works in other places doesn’t necessarily work here. At least that’s what I’m trying to convince myself.”
And ideally that wisdom will carry over to Penn’s car, the one on which Johnny spends so much time working, an effort backed in part by ThorSport, Johnny’s longtime truck team. Penn is a prospect. Every strong performance can only help get closer to following in the footsteps of his father, two uncles and a grandfather toward NASCAR.
Outwardly, Penn has ambitious hopes but also realistic goals for the Nationals. The first one is to make the feature, and the second to survive.
“Obviously the first time here in a super (late model, the premier class) is going to be exciting,” he said. “Way different than the limited.
“The end goal of this race is if you make the all 200 laps you’ll have a good finish by the end. I’m pumped for my first Nationals and we’ll see how it goes.”
It’ll be a learning experience, and more of that learning than ever, Penn will have to do by himself.
“The last two years he’s been my spotter,” he said. “That’s all I’ve known.
“It’s going to be different for sure. I can’t come in on the pit stop and say, Dad, what should I do? It’s going to be my own decision right away.”
The talk about spotters inevitably takes fans back to Norway, another bullring.
Midway through the race, Johnny was looking to pass Penn on the inside but didn’t quite get there, and Penn moved down when he wasn’t quite clear. Johnny ran up over the left rear.
Johnny has been hard on competitors after incidents throughout his career, even family. In this case, he did remember who he was dealing with.
“At the end of the day, it’s still living in the same house,” Penn said with a laugh. “Things have got to stay the same, I guess.”
There’s a balance to be struck on race night between that black No. 5 and orange No. 5 being just another car to pass or being driven by son and father.
“Obviously I don’t pay very good attention because I ran into him in Norway, and of all the cars you run into, that’s the last one I wanted to run into,” Johnny said.
“When you’re racing, you’re focused … locked in, I guess. But you want him to succeed, you want him to run well, but obviously we want to run well too. This takes so much effort. If people knew how much effort this took, they’d be blown away. It takes everything you’ve got, and that doesn’t even guarantee success.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Johnny Sauter, son Penn race together in Slinger Speedway's Nationals
Category: General Sports
