Matt Crafton held off Joey Coulter in a thrilling 25-lap green-flag run to the finish to win Saturday’s SFP 250 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Kansas Speedway.

The victory was Crafton’s first of the season and the third of his career. In beating Coulter to the finish line by .168 seconds, Crafton became the 13th different winner in 13 races at Kansas, breaking a tie for the series record with Homestead-Miami Speedway.

With a late pass, Ryan Blaney finished third, followed by Brendan Gaughan and series leader Johnny Sauter, Crafton’s ThorSport Racing teammate.

Crafton’s crew made wholesale changes to his No. 88 Toyota before the races, and the adjustments paid off.

“This truck was junk (Friday in practice),” Crafton said. “They made so many changes on this thing and turned this thing around. We knew we had something to win with about halfway through this race.”

With Coulter on his bumper for the duration, Crafton’s crew gave him some terse advice.

“They said, ‘Just put your head down and just flip your rearview mirror up and dig,’” Crafton said. “That’s what we did.”

Coulter fell back in traffic with about 10 laps left but rapidly closed back in on Crafton and challenged for the lead over the final five laps.

“When we went around a lapped car, I went in a little higher than Matt did behind that lapped car and just got a little bit tight and lost some ground,” Coulter said. “I wasn’t too worried about it. I was kind of thinking it was going to work out a little bit better.

“These trucks punch such a big hole in the air that sometimes being a little farther back is a better place to be with a few laps to go. But it ended up being the same thing. I could get to him, but (I couldn’t get) that five feet that I needed to get next to him.”

The race was red-flagged after Lap 120 after Todd Bodine took two brutal hits in the same wreck. Driving to the inside of Bodine, Brennan Newberry got loose and his No. 14 Chevrolet knocked Bodine into the outside wall. As Bodine’s Toyota slid down the track, impact from Bryan Silas’ Ford destroyed the front clip of Bodine’s truck and launched it back into the outside wall.

Bodine escaped injury, but the wreck left just 18 trucks—half the field—rolling for a restart on Lap 126, after a stoppage of 12 minutes, 41 seconds.

In a race that set a Truck Series track record for caution laps (52 of 167), contact between teammates on Lap 34 deprived the race of one of its fastest trucks. Polesitter James Buescher’s Chevrolet got loose during a restart and tapped the Chevy of his Turner Scott Motorsports teammate Miguel Paludo as the drivers battled for the lead.

Paludo crashed hard into the frontstretch wall and took his crippled truck to the garage.

“It’s OK—I know he didn’t mean to get into me,” Paludo said after exiting his truck. “It’s unfortunate, because we were having a great run, and we really needed a good finish.”

Shortly after the halfway point, another wreck took out another contender. After a restart on Lap 88, Kyle Busch got loose in traffic and chased his truck up the banking. Ryan Blaney passed Busch without incident, but the same wasn’t true of German Quiroga.

As Quiroga pulled to the inside of Busch’s Toyota, Quiroga lost control, and in trying to correct he spun Busch’s Tundra into the outside wall, ending the race for the No. 51 KBM team.

Behind the dramatic race to the checkers, James Buescher rolled to his first series championship, securing the title with a 13th-place run.

In a championship battle that generated little drama until the closing laps — when rookie Ty Dillon made a last-ditch move — Buescher drove a methodical race en route to the title. After Dillon wrecked with two laps left in regulation distance, Buescher finished six points ahead of series runner-up Timothy Peters, who ran eighth Friday.

Joey Coulter finished third in the season finale, followed by Nelson Piquet Jr. and Miguel Paludo.

Gale claimed the first victory of his career in a green-white-checkered-flag finish that took the race six laps beyond its scheduled distance of 134 laps. As he and Busch exited the final turn, Gale pinched Busch’s No. 18 Toyota against the outside wall, taking the checkered flag by a nose in a shower of sparks.

“I got drove into the fence,” Busch said. “That’s it. You saw it.”

Gale didn’t disagree.

“It’s not my style, but I knew that, if I could pinch him a little bit, I could get the advantage, and pretty much, that’s what I was thinking at that point,” Gale said. “A guy like me, it’s my first opportunity to come down for the checkered flag in a NASCAR race.

“Kyle’s a racer. He’s been in the same position I’ve been in. We’ve all seen hungry racers get an opportunity and take it. That’s what you have to do in this sport. He owes me, but I saw the checkers in the final race. That’s all I can say…

“When it comes down to the final straightaway to win at Homestead in the last race, and your first NASCAR win, I believe anybody would do it.”

Buescher started 17th, 14 spots behind Dillon (who entered the race 12 points behind the leader), but the driver of the No. 31 Chevrolet moved briskly toward the front, working his way up to eighth by the time debris from Bryan Silas’ contact with the outside wall in Turn 4 caused the second caution on Lap 43.

Buescher had dropped to 12th, the last car on the lead lap, when NASCAR called the third caution on Lap 104, again for debris. He held that spot after pit stops under the yellow and gained one spot to 11th before Max Gresham’s spin with 10 laps left brought out caution No. 4.

After a restart on Lap 130, Dillon charged into second place, 11 positions ahead of Buescher, but contact between the trucks of Kyle Larson and Dillon wrecked both as they fought for second and also collected the Dodge of Ryan Blaney.

Buescher pitted for tires after a 10-minute, 40-second stoppage and came home 13th after the two-lap sprint to the finish.

“Everybody on this team has done a fantastic job,” said Buescher, who won four times on the way to the title. “We had a shot at it last year, but we came into this year swinging and did a lot of work over the offseason. It definitely paid off. This is definitely the coolest thing I’ve ever done in racing.”

Despite the wreck that took him out of contention and dropped him to fourth in the standings behind Coulter, Dillon was philosophical when he talked about the final race.

“We just had to go out there and win the race and make something happen,” said Dillon, the series rookie of the year. “I just tried to make something happen there at the end, I got to second, and the points were looking good.

“We just missed that championship by a little bit, but I’m all right with everything that played out. We were going for it. We almost had it. We were trying to hit the home run in the bottom of the ninth and almost did it. But it’s all right. We’ll be back next year, fighting harder than ever.”

In a green-white-checkered-flag finish, Scott passed NASCAR wunderkind Kyle Larson to win Friday night’s Lucas Oil 150 Camping World Truck Series race at Phoenix International Raceway.

The victory was Scott’s first of the season and second of his career, his first win coming at Dover in 2009. But Scott provided only half the drama.

James Buescher and Ty Dillon, the top two contenders for the series championship, both had major trouble, with Buescher blowing a right front tire and crashing hard into the Turn 4 wall with less than three laps left.

Buescher finished 17th and Dillon 15th, to tighten the race for the title as the series heads for the season finale next Friday at Homestead. Buescher leads Timothy Peters by 11 points and Dillon by 12.

Passed by Dillon early in the race, Scott learned from the experience.

“I probably have to give a dozen roses to Ty Dillon,” said Scott, “because he was able to get by me on a restart earlier by holding me down and driving in deep through the corner and just keeping position on me — and I learned from it.

“Luckily I was able to come back and have the opportunity to do the same thing to somebody else, somebody that probably wasn’t expecting it… Fortunately for us, I was able to apply something I learned earlier in the race. I just went into the corner really hard, held him down and got him a little loose.”

Larson trailed Scott to the finish line, followed by Joey Coulter and Peters. Ryan Blaney completed the top five.

Friday’s race went green for the first 36 laps before it took on the character of a demolition derby. Six cautions, which occupied 33 of the next 42 laps, saw a rash of competitive trucks damaged on the treacherous race track.

Jason White collected Todd Bodine’s Toyota on Lap 49. Parker Kligerman’s Toyota broke loose in traffic on Lap 54 and waylaid the truck of Matt Crafton. Polesitter Nelson Piquet Jr., Johnny Sauter, Ron Hornaday Jr. and Miguel Paludo were involved in a four-truck melee on Lap 65.

Cale Gale crashed on the frontstretch on Lap 73 to bring out caution No. 6. Divergent pit strategies put Ryan Truex in the lead before Justin Lofton overtook him as the race neared the 100-lap mark, but a caution on Lap 102 shuffled the running order for a restart on Lap 109, with Peters and Scott leading the field to green.

Larson dived to the inside to pass the top two trucks on the restart lap, but one circuit later, German Quiroga drove too hard into Turn 1, locked his brakes and wrecked the trucks of Brendan Gaughan and Dillon.

NASCAR stopped the race for 13 minutes, 10 seconds to facilitate track cleanup. Back under yellow, Dillon’s crew worked frantically to patch the damage to the No. 3 Chevrolet, keeping Dillon on the lead lap.

Larson held the top spot until Scott passed him on Lap 152 of 153.

Note: Eric Phillips, who called the shots for the No. 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota driven by Scott, won for the 27th time as a Truck Series crew chief, second most all-time. He’s one behind KBM general manager Rick Ren in NCWTS crew chief victories.

To Matt Crafton, it was an unjustified bulldozer move.

Regardless of the point of view, Hamlin won Saturday’s Kroger 200 with an aggressive pass after a restart with eight laps left and showed no regret in claiming his second victory at the .526-mile short track and his second win in 15 career NASCAR Camping World Truck Series starts.

Hamlin, who started from the rear because he missed the drivers’ meeting —- thanks to a conflict with Sprint Cup practice — finished 1.932 seconds ahead of Nelson Piquet Jr., who bulled his way into the runner-up position after restarting fourth on Lap 193 of 200. Joey Coulter ran third, followed by Crafton and Scott Riggs.

Irate at Hamlin’s use of the front bumper, Crafton had some choice words for the driver of the No. 51 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota after the race. With Hamlin parked on pit road, Crafton leaned into the driver’s-side window to express his displeasure.

Hamlin’s reaction was “What did he expect?”

“When you’re the leader with a few laps to go, you’ve got to expect it,” said Hamlin, who moved Crafton out of the way and took the lead for the first time with six laps left. “you can’t wreck the guy — that’s off-limits — but moving him off and out of the groove, that’s standard protocol at this type of race track.”

Crafton disagreed and took umbrage at the characterization of Hamlin’s winning move as a pass.

“If you want to call that a pass—that’s just moving somebody,” Crafton said. “Running in the back of somebody, that doesn’t take anything. Anybody can do that. I didn’t let the tires come up quite clean enough on the last restart. I do admit that. That’s part of it. I didn’t get my tires cleaned up, but I did not run into the back of him.”

Ty Dillon’s one-point championship lead evaporated after his No. 3 Chevrolet blew a tire and nosed into the outside wall on Lap 151 to cause the fourth caution of the afternoon. After repeated trips to pit road for repairs, Dillon dropped to 28th, six laps down and could not improve on that position.

Dillon’s woes transferred the series lead to James Buescher, who rallied from a lap down to finish sixth. Buescher grabbed a 21-point lead over second-place Dillon with three races left in the season.

Even though he lost a lap in the early going and didn’t get it back until he received a free pass under the third caution midway through the race, Buescher was confident he could get back into contention.

“When we were a lap down, I did have all the faith in the world that we could turn it around and come back for a top-10 finish,” Buescher said. “I knew that we just needed some adjustments. We hadn’t stopped yet. We were still on the initial run, and I knew that we could get the back end in the track better.

“We were really loose and just needed to come to pit road for an adjustment and hit “reset.” We did that. (Crew chief) Michael Shelton made good calls on what to do to get the truck better, and it was able to go forward the rest of the day.”

Piquet dove low to the inside of Matt Crafton in the first turn and made the winning move stick on the backstretch of the 1.5-mile track. Crafton, whose winless streak stretched to 30 races, finished .223 seconds behind the Brazilian at the checkered flag.

Pole-starter Joey Coulter, who made a bold, three-wide move to briefly lead after the final restart, settled for third after leading a race-high 40 of the 146 laps. Las Vegas native Brendan Gaughan took fourth and Todd Bodine rallied from a first-lap spin to finish fifth.

It was the third national-series victory in what has been a breakthrough NASCAR season so far for Piquet, who also won in the Nationwide Series’ event at Road America in June and the Truck Series’ race at Michigan in August. Piquet twice tried to pull in front of Crafton over the final green-flag run, but made the third time the charm.

“I have no idea what happened,” Piquet said. “I had to give it a last try, I stuck it in there and God gave me a little bit more grip on the inside and we made it. It feels great. We really needed this win — probably the best win of my career. For sure, [one of the] top-five moments of my career.”

For Crafton, who led 13 of the last 14 laps except for the final one, the third runner-up finish in the past four races at Las Vegas had an unmistakable sting.

“That sucks, it plain and simple sucks,” Crafton said. “We had a great truck and were really good there at the end. He had a real good run there at the end … but my God, that’s a tough one to lose on the last lap.”

Ty Dillon finished 10th to keep his lead in the standings by one point over James Buescher, who wound up sixth. Timothy Peters finished eighth and ranks third, 24 points off the top.

Parker Kligerman led 36 laps but was sidelined with 20 laps remaining after his third scrape with the outside retaining wall. The 19th-place result dropped Kligerman one spot to fifth in the series points, 39 points behind Dillon.

Action-sports star Travis Pastrana recovered from a sixth-lap spin to finish 15th in his Truck Series debut.

The 22-year-old Buescher, who also won at the 1.5-mile track back on June 28, captured his fourth overall win of both the season and his NCWTS career (all on 1.5-mile tracks).

“I wouldn’t say it was a dominating performance like the last time we were here (led 119 of 150 laps), but I think we led the most laps and dominated anyway,” said Buescher, who indeed led the most laps Friday (64 of the race’s 134 circuits around the track). “We’ve won four races with the same truck and now we’re going to dust it off and take it to another mile-and-a-half (next week at Las Vegas).”

The Plano, Texas native won Friday’s race the hard way — taking a bigger gamble than most gamblers might do at some of the nearby casinos along the Ohio River — by not pitting for fuel in the final 53 laps.

Buescher’s Turner Motorsports crew chief, Michael Shelton, made sure his driver saved enough fuel in their Chevrolet Silverado at the right time — particularly on the last caution period from Lap 108 to 111 — to motor all the way to the checkered flag.

“We should have been at least two (laps) to the good,” Shelton said. “James saved fuel for us every way he could, but we were definitely close. It would have been real interesting if it had been a green-white-checker there and where everybody would have been, but fortunately it played out for us.”

Buescher, who admitted he wasn’t feeling 100 percent in the race, having battled the flu bug for the last three days, came in on Lap 81 for just two right-side tires and fuel to gain an advantage coming out of the pits. The strategy added to the drama when the seventh and final caution of the race occurred on Lap 107 after Jason White wrecked.

With 27 laps to go, Shelton elected to keep Buescher on the track to maintain position, as did his four closest challengers — pole-sitter Joey Coulter, rookie Ty Dillon, Parker Kligerman and Matt Crafton — setting up the fuel mileage outcome. Ironically, none of the leaders ran out of fuel in the final laps.

“I think we were two laps to the good, so maybe two more laps (left),” Dillon said. “We were chancing it there. . . . I’m a little bummed about finishing third just because James won, but we’ve got some speed and some great momentum.”

Dillon made a surge toward the front in the final 15 laps, but Buescher’s truck was nothing short of flawless, building a nearly two-second lead before finishing with a 1.292-second winning margin over runner-up Parker Kligerman, who rallied back from an earlier spin.

Dillon finished third, followed by Coulter and Brian Scott in fifth. Dillon now has three top-3 finishes in his last three starts: his first career NCWTS win at Atlanta, a second-place showing last week at Iowa and Friday’s third-place outing.

Dillon came into the race atop the points standings, leading Timothy Peters by eight points and Buescher by 11. But Buescher’s win significantly tightened things up, as Dillon’s lead is now only four points over Buescher. Peters, meanwhile, wrecked just before halfway and finished 21st, dropping to third place in the season standings, now 22 points behind Dillon.

“We battled back and our team showed a lot of resiliency,” Dillon said. “I’ll take this kind of day any day. Our team really has a lot of momentum going. … It’s not easy to finish three times in a row in the top three — first, second and third the last three weeks. If we keep doing that, the wins are going to come. We’re still a young and learning team and we’re going to keep fighting for these wins.

“It was a great race, I thought. We just needed a little bit more speed for the 31 (Buescher).”

The threat of heavy rain prior to the start of the race dissipated as the storm front stayed north by about 50 miles, and by the time the green flag fell for the 36 trucks that qualified to race, the skies were relatively clear, promising an exciting night of racing.

“We knew from the start of the race that there was weather near the track,” Kligerman said. “I actually on the pace laps said to my crew to make sure they were up on the weather, especially as we approached halfway (through the 134-lap race), just to make sure that we’re not giving anything up. We’re not here to just win a race, we’re here to win a championship.”

Last week’s first-time winner at Iowa Speedway, 18-year-old Ryan Blaney, had his own share of excitement even before the race began. During the first of two practice sessions earlier in the day, Blaney lost the handle on his Dodge truck, crashing into the Turn 1 wall. The damage was irreparable, prompting the team to go to a backup truck for the second practice and qualifying, in which Blaney placed 16th.

Even though his backup truck was a handful to drive at times, Blaney still managed to come home with an 11th-place finish.

On Lap 81, Kligerman lost control and went on a single-truck spin down the frontstretch, but with little damage and he was able to continue on. Not only that, Kligerman was able to recover, earning his second runner-up and fourth top-5 finish in five starts since joining Red Horse Racing.

“We had one of those nights where just everything that could go against us, even with a fast truck, went against us,” Kligerman said. “I tried to force the issue and spun out. From there, we were in recovery mode and passed a bunch of trucks on the restart. From there, we just tried to chase down the 31 (of Buescher), and just came up a little short.”

Buescher regained the lead on Lap 83 and never relinquished it from that point on.

As it turned out, however, the rain that everyone appeared to be watching faded away and the race was able to go the entire scheduled length without even a hint of precipitation.

Making his first start for Turner Motorsports, rookie Dakoda Armstrong had problems that began on the pace laps, when smoke began emitting from his Chevrolet Silverado. While he took the green flag, it was pretty clear he was suffering from an engine problem that quickly dropped him from his 20th qualifying spot to 28th in just the first 10 laps.

He eventually came onto pit road and called it a night as the engine suffered irreparable damage.

“I think the motor just took a crap,” Armstrong said afterward. “Unfortunately right from the get-go, it was blowing smoke out of the headers. As soon as we took the green, there was no power. It was gone. . . . It’s really disappointing. Everyone worked real hard to get this thing going.”

NOTES: The series moves to Las Vegas for a night race next Saturday, followed by the always unpredictable Talladega on Oct. 6. . . . Jason White made the biggest move in the standings — unfortunately downward — dropping three spots from ninth to 12th.

Peters, who started second, jumped to the lead past pole-sitter Cale Gale at the drop of the green flag and led every lap to roar to his second victory of the season and fifth of his career. The effort broke a tie atop the standings with top rookie Ty Dillon, who ran out of gas while running in the top five on the final restart and finished 21st.

Parker Kligerman, Peters’ Red Horse Racing teammate, matched a career-best in second with Ross Chastain third in his best finish in the Truck Series. Joey Coulter and Brendan Gaughan completed the top five.

Peters became the first driver to lead from green to checkered since Ron Hornaday paced all 225 laps at Louisville Motor Speedway on July 12, 1997. The 1-2 Red Horse Racing finish also gave team owner Tom DeLoach a fitting present for his 65th birthday.

“What an awesome feeling,” Peters said in Victory Lane. ” … I just thank the good Lord for being with me and letting me win two in one year. We’re working really hard, all the guys in the shop. The sky’s the limit right now.”

Peters withstood intense pressure on a handful of late-race restarts, most frequently from Brad Keselowski, the only driver racing in all three NASCAR national series this weekend. But the pressure from the Sprint Cup star subsided on the only attempt at a green-white-checkered finish that extended the race four laps past its scheduled 200-lap distance.

Kligerman slipped past Keselowski, his team owner until last week, on a restart with seven laps to go when the yellow flag flew for a final time for Gale’s heavy crash on the backstretch. That gave Peters a buffer in the form of a teammate starting alongside for the final restart.

“It’s my bad for getting a bad restart,” said Kligerman, making just his second start for Red Horse. “I consider myself a lot better restarter than that, so I’ll be beating myself up for the rest of the week, but congratulations to him. They’ve helped us so much.”

The lengthy clean-up for Gale’s wreck and ensuing overtime finish spelled doom for Keselowski and Dillon, who lined up third and fourth, respectively, for the final two-lap sprint. Keselowski’s truck was the first to stall out; Dillon’s sputtered to a near-stop moments later as Peters sailed away.

“I don’t know — really confusing. I should have had a good three or four laps of fuel left,” said Keselowski, who finished 25th in a quest for his first Truck Series victory. “I don’t know. Something happened, and we’ll have to go back and figure out what it was. We had a pretty good day going.”

The race was the first for a NASCAR national series on Bristol’s reconfigured .533-mile oval. Track officials opted to grind the top groove of progressive banking ground down with the desired effect of making the action closer. It was, eventually, after the first 81 laps were run without a caution period — the longest green-flag run to start a Truck Series race in more than seven years.

Peters boosted his points lead to 17 points over James Buescher, who finished seventh Wednesday. Dillon faded from his tie for the lead to third, 25 points off the top.

Coulter charged from third to first moments after a restart on Lap 44 of 50 at the 2.5-mile triangular track, after a caution on Lap 39 that took series leader Timothy Peters out of the race. Peters was racing through the tunnel turn, got loose beneath another truck and spun into the wall, as two separate incidents in the same corner damaged five cars.

“As soon as the spotter said ‘Green,’ I put the foot to the floor and just let the ECR (Earnhardt Childress Racing Engines) Chevrolet horsepower do the rest,” Coulter said. “We needed to make moves quick. Track position was real important.

“It was new pavement (since last year’s truck race), and it picked the speeds up, but it sure did make it hard to pass. I knew we had to get it done right there, or we weren’t going to have a second chance at it.”

Third-place finisher and pole-sitter Nelson Piquet Jr., who led 33 laps and brought the field to green for the final time, said restarts are complicated at Pocono, which features the longest straightaway in NASCAR racing at 3,740 feet.

“The last restart was a bit of a problem,” Piquet said. “It’s so wide. I didn’t know if I would defend on my left — Coulter — or if I would try to keep my line with James (Buescher) next to me, and it ended up being three-wide in the first corner.

“That was it. I lost all my position — still recovered to third. But it was a shame. Obviously, we had a fast truck, the quickest one out there. All we wanted to do was win.”

Matt Crafton and Denny Hamlin finished fourth and fifth, respectively. Ty Dillon, Parker Kligerman, John Wes Townley, Justin Lofton and Ross Chastain completed the top 10.

Piquet survived a run-in with Todd Bodine, who surged forward after a restart on Lap 34 but turned across the nose of Piquet’s Chevrolet when he moved down the track into Piquet’s line.

“I’ll take the blame for that whole thing just because I should have known better than to trust an idiot to do the right thing,” Bodine said. “I pulled down to draft off of James (Buescher) and I should have known that Nelson wasn’t smart enough to pull over with me and side-draft me.

“If it was the last lap of the race, I could see that. He thinks he owes me one anyway from Kansas, I think it was, but it’s a shame.”

Piquet dismissed Bodine’s suggestion.

“It was right at the exit of the corner, James was to my outside, and they passed me to the outside, so I didn’t even have time to tuck behind (Bodine),” Piquet explained. “His spotter should have told him that I was beside him . . .

“There’s nothing I could have done. I was never expecting something like that. The move he did was a bit inexperienced. You would expect somebody like me to do something like that. (Piquet is in his second full NCWTS season; Bodine is a two-time series champion.)

“It was after a corner, after a restart — everybody’s kind of chaotic over there. Not much to say. I couldn’t have done anything else.”

Notes: Dillon cut Peters’ series lead to eight points. . . . Townley scored the first top 10 of his career.

Sauter passed ThorSport Racing teammate Matt Crafton on Lap 146 of 167 and rolled to victory by a margin of 2.101 seconds in the 16th annual WinStar World Casino 400K. Sauter, who hadn’t led a race since the season-opener at Daytona International Speedway in February, decisively snapped a string of three consecutive finishes of 24th or worse.

Sauter’s shot at the win here last year went awry when he was black-flagged for moving out his lane before reaching the start/finish line on a late-race restart opposite Ron Hornaday Jr. While Hornaday celebrated his third career victory at TMS, Sauter retreated to his trailer after placing 22nd.

“There’s no sweeter vindication,” said Sauter, driver of the No. 13 Toyota Tundra co-owned by Mike Curb, and Duke and Rhonda Thorson. “Last year was really tough to swallow coming down to a late-race restart, but I broke the rules. The season we’ve had this year has been bad luck after bad luck. I couldn’t be prouder of (crew chief) Joe Shear and the guys at ThorSport. The driver’s only a small part of the equation. That truck could pretty much drive itself.”

Sauter credited Shear’s setup with allowing him to lead on two occasions for 41 laps, 14 fewer than championship leader Justin Lofton.

“Setups . . . I’ve come here and been humbled when I’ve left, it was so bad,” said Sauter, a 34-year-old native of Necedah, Wis., with Texas ties. “Grandma lives 20 miles down the road up there in Dallas, and I get to go there and eat chicken n’ dumplings once a year. This track really puts an emphasis on handling. We just hit the setup right. Joe did a great job; right off the truck we were at the top of the board. We passed a million trucks, it seemed like tonight.”

Sauter scored his fifth career victory in his 93rd start at an average speed of 123.925 mph, while Crafton posted his 12th top-10 finish in 23 races at TMS. Crafton’s third top-10 finish of 2012 marked the second 1-2 result for ThorSport, based in Sandusky, Ohio.

“Anytime you can finish 1-2 it shows the equipment and the people we’ve got, how hard they work,” said Shear, who oversaw the team’s offseason switch from Chevrolet Silverado sheet metal to the Tundra. “We come here with Toyota and their support and I’m proud of all the guys.”

Sauter’s first victory of 2012 was his second top-10 of the season and sixth top-10 result on TMS’ 1.5-mile quad-oval.

“Every win is special, and I’ve been fortunate to win some very cool races in the truck series,” said Sauter, the 2009 Rookie of the Year. “This one is going to rank right up there, with the start to this season. Last year was tough. That definitely by far was the toughest loss. It’s hard not to think about that because everybody’s talking about it.”

With the exception of a fourth-place finish at Rockingham Speedway in mid-April, Sauter hadn’t placed higher than 24th (three times) in the previous six races.

“I’m competitive to a fault,” said Sauter, who finished second to Austin Dillon in the truck series championship last year. “I get a little bit too wound-up. The way this season’s gone has been very trying. I’m trying to keep everything in perspective. I got wound up with about 35 laps to go and Joe said to shut up . . . and I never said another word.”

Crafton, driver of the No. 88 Toyota, held off Joey Coulter, who posted his third top-10 finish in as many starts at TMS in his No. 22 Richard Childress Racing Chevy. Coulter was followed by Brendan Gaughan, a four-time winner at TMS, and Nelson Piquet Jr.

Ty Dillon, Austin’s younger brother, was the highest finishing rookie (seventh) despite late-race contact that sent Texas resident James Buescher into the Turn 1 wall while they were battling side-by-side for the lead on Lap 138. That incident brought out the race’s seventh caution and allowed Crafton to inherit the lead, with Sauter in fourth.

Lofton worked his way back to a ninth-place finish after getting caught in the pits when Bryan Silas’ spin on the backstretch brought out the night’s sixth caution on Lap 199. Lofton, who fell from the lead to 20th during that sequence, increased his lead over Timothy Peters to five points heading into the next event at Kentucky Speedway on June 28.

The first two came on rural short tracks in Virginia. The third was a shocker — Friday night’s improbable victory in the NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona International Speedway.

It took three attempts at a green-white-checkered-flag finish for King to win his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race in his eighth start in the series and his first on a superspeedway.

King was in the lead in the third overtime when Joey Coulter’s Chevrolet flew into the catch fence on the frontstretch after James Buescher’s Chevy turned sideways from contact with the truck of Ron Hornaday Jr. Coulter walked away from the wreck.

The resulting caution froze the field and made a winner of King, who still seemed amazed at his accomplishment when he talked to reporters after the race.

“This is feature win No. 3 for me — in my whole career,” King said. “It’s unbelievable. I couldn’t imagine being here, and we’re here.”

A hard crash on Lap 104 — four laps into overtime at the 2.5-mile track — took out race leader Johnny Sauter, who turned into the outside wall in the tri-oval off the bumper of King, igniting a multicar melee behind them.

“Golly, I flat freakin’ wrecked him,” King lamented on his radio after NASCAR red-flagged the race to clean up debris from the wreck.

Five laps and an 11-minute stoppage later, after a torrent of reassuring words from crew chief Chad Kendrick, King was in victory lane. Timothy Peters, King’s Red Horse Racing teammate came home second. Justin Lofton was credited with a third-place finish, followed by Travis Kvapil and Jason White.

“All I know was, the closing rate was real fast, and I couldn’t get off of him,” King said of the contact with Sauter’s car. “I’m a rookie, and I’ve never pushed (another car in the draft) in my life, and this is my first time at Daytona Speedway or any superspeedway.

“I apologize to him from the bottom of my heart. It wasn’t my intention at all.”

A caution on Lap 61 for a crash involving John King, Cale Gale and Mike Skinner provided a window for drivers to make their final pit stops. The trip down pit road failed to break up the dominant combination of Turner Motorsports drivers Buescher and polesitter Miguel Paludo.

Nelson Piquet Jr., the third of the Turner drivers, took the lead soon after a restart on Lap 69, and the Turner Chevrolets ran 1-2-3 as the race closed in on the 75-lap mark. To that point, Turner drivers had led every green-flag lap.

Lap after lap they maintained that order, Piquet leading Paludo and Buescher, all three trucks hugging the yellow line at the bottom of the track until White led a surge in the outside lane and grabbed the lead from Paludo on Lap 84.

As the trucks approached the stripe on that circuit, Paludo’s Chevy turned sideways and slammed nose-first into the inside wall, bring an abrupt end to the Turner triumvirate.

White led the field to the subsequent restart on Lap 91, with Piquet in second, Sauter third and Buescher fourth. White stayed out front until Parker Kilgerman’s Dodge spun sideways on Lap 95, scattering the back half of the field and damaging the trucks of David Starr, Ross Chastain, Dusty Davis and Bryan Silas.

Notes: Ward Burton finished eighth in his first start in any of NASCAR’s top three series since 2007… Paulie Harraka, who triggered an early wreck, got five straight “lucky dogs” (free passes to regain lost laps) as the highest-scored lapped car. He finished 19th in his first start in the series.