Sizzling Sawyer snookers them on restart

Elton Sawyer

By Tim Packman, Turner Sports Interactive
October 8, 2001
10:58 AM EDT (1458 GMT)

CONCORD, N.C. -- If races can be won or lost in the pits, the same can be said about restarts.

Elton Sawyer used an excellent restart to his advantage to post a ninth-place finish Saturday in the Little Trees 300 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

With 29 laps remaining, the caution came out for Kenny Wallace's spin. With the field lined up for the restart, Sawyer was seventh behind race leader Matt Kenseth.

Lewis finishes fifth  Rainy-day stories  Little Trees 300 Results  Kenseth spins, Biffle wins

As the green flag flew and Kenseth struggled to get back to speed, Sawyer wisely swung his Ford between the lead-lap cars and the outside wall, vaulting up to third at the completion of one lap.

“Obviously, we took off and I don’t know if (Ashton Lewis Jr.) and all those guys in front of him checked up or not,” Sawyer said. “But I had to go to the outside so I wouldn’t run into the back of him. I guarantee you, if the green hadn’t been out, we would have been black-flagged.

However, because he had only taken two tires, Sawyer's car started to fade in the waning laps.

Elton Sawyer has moved up to fifth place in points, thanks to his recent hot streak.

“Those guys had four tires and we had two," he said. "We lost track position early because we took four and had a fast car, but we couldn’t get back to them. At the end, it was kind of like on the reverse side.”

Sawyer continued his tear as of late, with 12 top-10 finishes in his last 15 races.The 41-year-old native of Norfolk, Va., has two career victories, 50 top-fives and 129 top-10s in 385 starts.

Sawyer finished 19th in the spring race at Lowe's.

“I’ll tell you,” Sawyer said. “For the way we ran here in the spring, to come back and finish in the top 10 is a pretty good day.”