Following the race, NASCAR officials confiscated the fuel cell from the No. 98 ThorSport Racing truck.

The officials found that the team  violated Sections 12-1 (actions detrimental to stock car racing); 12-4K (if in the judgment of NASCAR Officials, race equipment that has been previously verified or previously approved and/or sealed by NASCAR for use in an event, pursuant to sub-section 8-6 and/or 8-12, has been altered, modified, repaired, or changed in any manner); 20B-16 (once a fuel cell or fuel cell components have been certified, modifications of any kind will not be permitted to the fuel cell or fuel cell components); and 20B-16.1B (standard black, safety foam with minimum free-standing height of eight (8) inches, acceptable to NASCAR Officials, and used as provided by an approved fuel cell manufacturer, must be used: Fuel cell safety foam modification.) of the 2013 rule book.

Crew chief Joel Shear has been fined $10,000 and suspended from NASCAR competition for the next four Trucks Series races. He has also been put on probation to the end of the calendar year.

Johnny Sauter was penalized with the loss of 25 championship driver’s points. And, owner Mike Curb has been penalized with the loss of 25 owner’s points.

The penalty cost Sauter the points lead. He is now tied with Jeb Burton, 13 points behind new leader Matt Crafton.

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.

Sauter won the season opener at Daytona, and after a break of 43 days, won the second race of the season at the .526-mile short track. Sauter won for the eighth time in the Truck series and posted his first back-to-back victories. It was only the second time in series history that a driver has opened the season with back-to-back wins; the first was 2006 by Mark Martin.

Sauter’s ThorSport Racing teammate, Matt Crafton, passed Burton for the second spot with four laps left. Burton held third, but his top-five finish was clouded by an accident on Lap 103, when he turned Ron Hornaday Jr. into the Turn 3 wall while battling for the lead.

Timothy Peters and Darrell Wallace Jr. completed the top five.

Though Sauter and Burton were on equal tires at the finish–in terms of the timing of their last pit stops, at least–Burton had put more stress on his right rear as he worked his way through the field.

“We all knew today was going to be about tire management, just from the tire wear we saw (Friday in practice), moreso than ever before that I can ever remember here at Martinsville,” said Sauter, a perennial hard charger. “The first part of the race, we ran 80 percent, just trying to maintain and not lose too much track position, but still try to run as fast as we could.

“That’s really hard to do, because you’ve got to keep the people behind you behind you, and you don’t want to use too much of your equipment up. … With about 45 or 50 to go, I put the hammer down and was picking them off. I still can’t believe we did it.”

With two straight wins, Sauter holds a 12-point lead over Burton in the series standings.

“I really wanted to win,” Burton said. “We have ‘em covered half the race. We were really good at the beginning, and we adjusted to the track half way (through the race). Everything was good, and we still had ‘em covered, I thought, and then I used the right rear tire a little bit too early when I had to get back through there.

“That was my fault. I thought there was 40 (laps) to go, and there was actually was 60 to go, and I went a little harder than I needed to.”

About the contact with Hornaday, Burton’s explanation was short and simple.

“I ran in a little too hard and got into him, and there’s not much else to say about it,” Burton said.

In a battered No. 9 Chevrolet, Hornaday rallied to finish 10th, making use of two free passes under caution as the highest scored lapped car.

Divergent pit strategies put Kevin Harvick in the lead for a restart on Lap 151 of a scheduled 250, but Harvick, who had stayed out on old tires, gave up the top spot to Nelson Piquet Jr. one lap later and began a freefall back through the field.

Three circuits after a Lap 162 restart following the eighth caution, Wallace snagged the lead from Piquet and opened an advantage of more than three seconds, but both Wallace and Piquet opted to come to pit road for fresh rubber on Lap 198, under the ninth caution for Max Gresham’s spin in Turn 2.

That gave the lead back to Burton, who brought the field to green on Lap 203, with Wallace, Piquet and Harvick deep in the field on new tires. John Wes Townley’s hard crash in Turn 4 caused the 10th caution on Lap 206 and bunched the field for a restart on Lap 218.

Wallace restarted seventh on fresh tires and had worked his way up to third by the time Harvick tapped and spun Todd Bodine in Turn 3 on Lap 229 to bring out the 11th caution. By then, Sauter, who last came to pit road with Burton on Lap 146, had fought his way into second place and was challenging Burton for the lead when the yellow flag flew.

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.

Team spokesman Matt LaNeve said:

We have been very lucky this season with the partners that the Armstrong’s have brought to the No. 98 truck. However sponsorship funding was unable to be secured for the remaining eight races, resulting in ThorSport Racing having to part ways with Dakoda.

Armstrong has posted nine top 20 finishes, with his best finish being a 3rd in the VFW 200 at Michigan International Speedway.

ThorSport plans to continue to field the No. 88 truck for Matt Crafton and the No. 13 truck for Johnny Sauter.

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.

Buescher not only made up those two laps, he needed just one lap –- the final one –- to grab the lead and go on to win his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series-leading third race of the season at Chicagoland Speedway.

Leading just six laps in the entire event, Buescher passed points leader Timothy Peters and then held off Brendan Gaughan, who led 83 of the 150 laps, to win his second race in the last three events.

“We had issues early on where we kept losing power, so we decided to pit, changed the carburetor and the car came to life,” Buescher said. “From there, it was a matter of getting our laps back and going forward from there.”

And then, with a smile on his face, Buescher added, “We just had to pass 20 other trucks to win.”

Gaughan was looking to get his first Trucks win in nearly nine years, and it appeared he would do just that, given how strong he and his Chevrolet truck looked early on. After spinning his tires on a late restart, he valiantly rallied from sixth to settle for second place.

“I think about not winning (since 2003) every single day,” Gaughan said. “I thought tonight might finally be our night. But still, to run the way we did, and the great equipment Richard Childress gave us, this was really a great run, especially since we’re only racing a part-time schedule.”

Rather than risk wrecking on the final lap, points leader Peters wisely played it safe, finishing third. Matt Crafton finished fourth and Parker Kligerman rounded out the top 5.

“We did the right thing, used the right strategy and padded our points lead,” Peters said. “You can’t ask for much more than that – other than winning.”

Rounding out the top 10 were Cale Gale, Ron Hornaday Jr, Jason Leffler, Jason White and David Starr.

With six laps left, pole-sitter Justin Lofton slammed into the outside wall, bringing out the final caution of the race, setting up a shootout to the checkered flag between Peters and Buescher.

Gaughan, starting only his fourth NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race of the season, was hoping for his first NCWTS win since Oct. 11, 2003 at Texas Motor Speedway, his sixth triumph of that season. Unfortunately, he would come up short, extending his current winless streak to 130 races.

Bryan Silas’ spin on lap 8 brought out the first caution flag, right after Miguel Paludo and Ron Hornaday Jr. got together. Paludo bounced off Hornaday and slapped the wall, damaging the right side of his Silverado and forcing him to pit for right-side tires.

Eight laps later, although there was no resulting caution, Johnny Sauter bounced into Nelson Piquet Jr., causing heavy damage that cost Piquet a number of laps on pit road as the damage was repaired.

After getting back on the track, Piquet was forced back to pit road when the splitter on his truck snapped off, prompting a replacement and eventually causing him to miss 36 of the first 75 laps.

On Lap 45, Jason Leffler missed his pit box, forcing him to go all the way around the 1.5-mile track. Then to make matters worse, Leffler’s crew struggled to perform necessary service. As a result, Leffler went from being a top-five truck prior to his mistake to nearly two laps down.

Others also suffered pit stop mishaps, most notably drivers having issues finding their appropriate pix box, including series veterans Todd Bodine and Ron Hornaday Jr.

The yellow caution flag came out for a second time on lap 71 for debris. On the resulting pit stop, Gaughan came in only for fuel, allowing him to retain his lead over the rest of the field.

When Jennifer Jo Cobb brought out the caution flag for the third time due to a single truck spin, Buescher was forced to pit for a lengthy stop as his team replaced a faulty carburetor.

Chris Fontaine brought out the fourth caution of the race with 51 laps remaining following a solo spin.

Joey Coulter had one of the fastest trucks throughout the two practice sessions, qualified on the outside pole and remained in the top five for much of the first two-thirds of the race, but got caught up in a wreck with 44 laps left. His crew quickly repaired the damage and got him back on track (in 18th position) without losing a lap.

Four drivers were sent to the back of the field to start the race: Parker Kligerman and Chad McCumbee, both for adjustments after impound, and points leader Timothy Peters for and engine change and Johnny Sauter for missing the pre-race drivers meeting.

Several drivers reached significant milestones in their respective careers:

–Just one lap before halfway through the 150-lap event, four-time series champion Hornaday became the second driver in NCWTS history to complete 50,000 laps in his career. Hornaday finished 6th.

–Todd Bodine, who made his 200th series start, became the first driver to earn at least 200 starts in each of NASCAR’s three premier series: NASCAR Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series, finished 18th.

–David Starr became the fifth driver in series history to reach 300 starts. Starr finished 10th.

It certainly was memorable.

Peters took the lead off a restart with 10 laps remaining to dash to victory in the NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series American Ethanol 200 Saturday night at Iowa Speedway. The win was the first of the season, allowing him to increase his season points lead to 12 over Justin Lofton.

“I love Iowa and I love going to places where our results are OK and turning them into a best finish,” Peters said. “Today was definitely a milestone in my career, I feel like, because I’ve never sat on the pole and never led like we did tonight to win the race.”

The Red Horse Racing driver claimed his first pole position of the season. He became the third trucks driver in four races to win from the pole.

Peters achieved it in dramatic fashion. A late wreck forced a seventh caution with less than 20 laps remaining to set up the final restart between Peters and veteran Ron Hornaday Jr. When Hornaday spun his tires slightly at the starting lineup, Peters moved ahead, never looked back and pulled away for his fourth career win.

The last caution was a welcome sight to Peters.

“We just launched really well, and got a really good restart and beat him to the corner for a good start into turn 1,” said Peters, who was determined to improve his restarts from the Kentucky Speedway race in June. “He couldn’t get by. I was sitting there praying that the caution wouldn’t come out.”

Peters exacted a little revenge from Hornaday, who snatched the lead from him on a restart with 33 laps to go, diving to the inside of both Peters and Johnny Sauter.

“He just came out of nowhere,” Peters said of Hornaday. “He’s always good on restarts.”

Hornaday was just the third leader after more than three-quarters of the race was dominated by Peters and James Buescher, who was vying for his third win of the season.

The pair traded leads, distancing themselves from the field. Buescher was in control when an unexpected accident eliminated him from contention and helped Peters.

Buescher blew his right-front tire, sending him into the wall coming out of Turn 2 on Lap 135.

“We’ll take it,” Peters said. “I felt like that he and I did have the stronger trucks. It was going to be decided by him or I so in the end I’m glad I’m sitting here talking to (the media).”

Peters lead 87 laps, which was four less than Buescher. He praised the work of his crew for producing a powerful Toyota Tundra.

“I can’t thank these guys enough for what we accomplished tonight,” Peters said. “Hopefully this is one of many more.”

Peters mentioned the importance of a victory to enhance his ability to contend for the points title.

“It’s nice to get the monkey off our backs and get to Victory Lane finally,” crew chief Butch Hylton said. “We’ve been working really hard to do that.”

Hornaday placed second for his best performance of the season. He was encouraged by the finish.

“We made some adjustments in the race,” Hornaday said. “We made it tight. It was just not good enough.

“That was a big leap and gain for the racing team and the new truck we just built. It shows a good sign we’re on our track.”

Matt Crafton, who won the Coca-Cola 200 last year at Iowa Speedway, was third, giving him four top-four finishes at the 0.875-mile track.

Sunoco Rookie of the Year leader Ty Dillon was the highest finishing rookie. Dillon, who had top-two finishes at Iowa Speedway in the ARCA Series in 2010 and 2011, finished seventh after opening the race in 15th.

Keselowski passed Dillon with two laps left to run second, 3.805 seconds behind Buescher. Dillon came home third, followed by pole-sitter Matt Crafton and Timothy Peters, who grabbed the series lead from Justin Lofton.

Johnny Sauter recovered from a pit road penalty to finish sixth, followed by Joey Coulter, Jason Leffler, Ron Hornaday Jr. and 19-year-old Kyle Larson, who was making his series debut.

Buescher drove the same No. 31 Chevrolet he drove to his first NCWTS victory at Kansas in April.

“I think this race especially — both the truck wins we have were won in the shop,” Buescher said. “This is the third time I’ve raced this truck, the second time I’ve gone to Victory Lane with it. . . . The truck was phenomenal.

“We unloaded a little bit off and made some changes right away in practice this morning, and the truck came to life pretty good. We worked on it throughout practice, and I knew halfway through the first practice that we had a truck capable of running up front, possibly a truck capable of winning.

“Then, in the second practice, we found some more speed. I’m so excited to be able to get (sponsor) Exide Batteries to Victory Lane, to lead that many laps and dominate like that.”

A three-car wreck on Lap 69, involving two-time series champ Todd Bodine, Lofton and last week’s Nationwide Series winner Nelson Piquet Jr. put Lofton’s points lead in peril.

With a strong run to the inside in Turn 1, Bodine dived beneath Lofton, broke loose and knocked Lofton’s truck into the Chevrolet of Piquet, who slammed into the outside wall. Bodine blamed Lofton for not giving him enough room.

“I thought Justin was blowing up,” Bodine said. “I caught him so fast — I didn’t know what was going on, if he got loose off of (Turn) 4 or what. I caught him so fast, thought he was blowing up, so I went under him, and, obviously, he wasn’t blowing up. . . .

“He’s got plenty of room outside — he’s got to learn to give some space here. When you get that close and that tight on somebody, you’re just taking all their air, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”

Both Bodine and Piquet retired from the race at that point, but Lofton was able to continue. Taking a wave-around under the sixth caution — called on lap 102 because of Tim George Jr.’s spin into the Turn 2 wall — Lofton regained a lap lost during repairs to his truck and salvaged a 14th-place finish to limit his damage in the standings.

Dillon took the lead briefly with a two-tire pit stop under that caution, but Buescher regained the top spot moments after a restart on Lap 108. All told, Buescher led 119 of 150 laps.

Peters leaves Kentucky with a four-point lead over both Lofton and Dillon, with Buescher in fourth place, nine points back.