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With his 14-year-old son’s schedule already announced, Johnny Sauter, the 2016 NASCAR truck champion from DeForest, concedes his 2025 racing plans are up in the air.
He’s putting together a car for Penn, who turns 15 next week, and Penn will race about a dozen super late model special events with backing from ThorSport, the team for which Johnny raced in the truck series for 10-plus years.
He’ll also build one for himself.
“Whatever that means, I don’t know,” Sauter said Friday night. “But you can’t race if you don’t have stuff sitting there. So I can’t make a plan for myself personally, and the NASCAR world, I don’t have a clue what’s going on there. People call you generally two weeks before they need you, or sometimes the week-of, so right now we’re just focused on him.”
The sport has changed markedly since Johnny was Penn’s age, with business savvy becoming increasingly important and technology replacing the seat-of-the-pants feel and hands-on engineering. Johnny is a throwback, he freely admits, and at 46, he isn’t about to change.
Where he can help Penn is getting to the track and then getting around it, the way his late father, Jim, and brothers Jay and Tim did a generation ago.
“He enjoys it, and he’s pretty good at it,” Sauter said. “Obviously, that’s what I grew up around, is racing and working on race cars. So it’s even fun for me. So yeah, as long as he’s having a good time doing it, we’ll keep doing it.”
The elder Sauter picked up the pair’s first racing victory Friday, albeit on the ice in a one-lap tricycle relay race teamed with Josh Bilicki, at the Milwaukee Admirals’ motorsports night at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena.
Beforehand, the participating drivers spoke with reporters. Here are other highlights.
Josh Bilicki cobbles together NASCAR deals and is ‘blessed to be in the position’
Other than starting off the season with the birth of his first child – due early next month – Josh Bilicki expects his racing schedule to look much like recent years’ have. The 29-year-old from Richfield is in his ninth season of piecing together deals that allow him to make a living in racing.
He will do much of the Xfinity Series season with DGM Racing, and some Cup Series races. And, hopefully, a few races with a high-level Xfinity or Camping World Truck Series team. And the Chili Bowl midget race next week. And some sprint car races closer to home.
“My goal really was to run either full time in the Xfinity Series or the truck series, or put together a really competitive opportunity with five to 10 races at (Joe) Gibbs (Racing) or a Spire (Motorsports) truck,” Bilicki said. “At the end of the day, it costs a lot of money. You look at a guy like Chandler Smith, who has a little bit of self-funding, and even he won a couple races in a Gibbs car, and he still out a ride.
“You know, I unfortunately rely solely off sponsor dollars to go race, and I’m still just very blessed to be in the position I am, or I’m still able to make it a career, and I think it’s gonna be a great year.”
Sam Mayer turns the page in the Xfinity Series
After spending almost a third of his life with Chevrolet and Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s teams, Franklin native Sam Mayer is starting a new chapter in his racing career this season with Ford and Haas Factory Team in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.
Mayer, 21, has won seven times in the division for JR Motorsports, with the first victory coming in 2023 at Road America in Elkhart Lake.
“Chevrolet has taken care of me and done a lot of great things for me,” he said. “It’s just everyone loves Chevrolet, and everyone’s been a part of Chevrolet, and there’s no seats in the Cup Series with drivers that are moving on to the next part of their life.
“So Ford kind of just came across my desk, and it was an opportunity that could lead to Cup Series opportunities and really solid racing opportunities in the future to be a Cup Series champion and the Xfinity Series champion maybe here at the end of the year.”
Haas is a start-over program after the dissolution of Stewart Haas Racing when champion driver Tony Stewart got out of the NASCAR business. Mayer will be teamed with Sheldon Creed in Xfinity, while Cole Custer moves back into the Cup Series.
Nolan Siegel is looking to build in his first full season with Arrow McLaren
A year ago Nolan Siegel thought he’d be racing for an Indy NXT title. Twelve months later, he’s a class winner in the 24 Hours of Le Mans about to build on 12 NTT IndyCar Series starts in what will be his first full season.
“It’s been nice this off season,” said Siegel, 20, who landed a multiyear deal with Arrow McLaren last summer. “I’ve moved to Indianapolis. I’m in the shop every day. Now I know all of the engineers on my car, all of the mechanics. We all spend time together, and it makes a difference, you know. … So I think by St. Pete, we’re gonna be a lot more prepared than we were for any of the races last year.”
IndyCar opens its season March 2 on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida. Wisconsin dates on the schedule are June 22 at Road America in Elkhart Lake and Aug. 24 at the Milwaukee Mile.
Siegel was the third driver last season for McLaren’s No. 6 car after David Malukas was introduced as its driver but released before recovering from a preseason cycling injury without running a race.
In 12 starts last season, Long Beach with Dale Coyne, Road America with Juncos Hollinger and 10 races with McLaren – plus a near miss in Indianapolis 500 qualifying – Siegel scored a top finish of seventh at World Wide Technology Raceway, the 1.25-mile oval outside St. Louis.
“There were a few races last year, mainly the short ovals, where we came away from weekends feeling like we should have been on the podium,” Siegel said. “And I think capitalizing on those opportunities, when we have a strong car and have a strong weekend, is the goal. I don’t want to walk away from as many weekends kind of talking about what should have been. I want to actually make it happen.”
Drag racer Chris King dreamed of getting on the ice as an Admirals
Chris King dreamed the call he received from the Admirals would be for a tryout, not to ride a tricycle. A Racine native, King went to hundreds of games since as a kid, 20 to 30 a year.
These days he is a Chicago firefighter trying to build a Funny Car team while still playing the game he loves.
“My whole life, I’ve been like an adrenaline junkie, racing cars, racing motorcycles, firefighter, hockey,” said King, 49. “And not just regular hockey, a goalie. You got to be out of your mind because you got people shooting pucks at your face at 100 miles an hour.”
As for racing at 300 mph, at the moment King is a one-man band on the business side and works with a volunteer crew. Most of their 2025 schedule will come at events that are shorter drives. Still, he’s a dreamer.
“I don’t know where my path will take me,” he said. “I love driving the car right now, but eventually everybody gets older, and you may have to step out of the car. And depending on where I’m at in life, I may be a team owner and have a driver come in and drive for me or just use my car to license people that are up and coming.
“But there’s a lot of opportunities, and as long as I can stay in racing, I think I’d be happy.”
Jordan Missig is back on the Road to Indy
The path has been anything but smooth for Jordan Missig, but the 26-year-old Illinois driver now finds himself one step away from IndyCar.
Missig’s stops on the Road to Indy ladder system included time with Pabst Racing Services in Oconomowoc. When funding didn’t come through least year, he found a ride with IndyCar driver Graham Rahal’s startup Radical Cup team and won the championship. He also caught on with Abel Motorsports for five Indy NXT races and secured a fulltime ride for 2025.
“Last year towards the end of the season, (the goal) was to get a top-10,” Missig said. “This year, my expectation right now is to get a top five. Once we beat that, maybe the expectation is to get a podium, then the expectations to get a win … Little by little, steps here and there is what kind of works out the progression ladder and what I feel like makes you a professional.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Sauter, Bilicki, Mayer, Siegel, other racers speak at Admirals game
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