In the closing laps of the race, Scott was limping to a 15th-place finish when he got together with Nelson Piquet Jr, which knocked Scott out of the groove in Turn 2. Scott dropped from 15th down to 20th.

On the cool down lap, Scott, of Richard Childress Racing,  cut in front of Piquet, or Turner Scott Motorsports.

When the two cars stopped on pit road and exited their cars, Piquet pushed and kicked Scott, a kick Scott called “below the belt.” The two crews almost came to blows.

Scott said:

I was just showing my displeasure with him after the race and then things escalated. I went to talk to him, I was a little heated and the camera probably shows it, but he kicks me right below the belt, which I think is a below-the-belt type of shot.

Scott and Piquet were called to the NASCAR hauler.

Evidently, an earlier incident between Dillon, also of RCR, and Allgaier, of TSM, caused the tension between the two teams. The incident between Scott and Piquet only intensified the tension.

Later, Henrico County police were called to the driver/owner lot at Richmond and two RCR crew members were arrested. Michael A. Scearce and Thomas F. Costello, of RCR’s No. 2 team, the car driven by Scott, were taken into custody for their part in an alleged assault in which two adult males were injured. Both were charged with misdemeanors and released.

Richard Childress talked about the incident:

I didn’t witness what took place last night outside of the race track. Our team members were walking to their cars and words were exchanged with members from another team, which led to an altercation. I am still learning all the exact details and, because it did happen outside of the track, local authorities became involved. We are working with them to resolve this matter.

Turner Scott Motorsports released a statement:

Turner Scott Motorsports can confirm that an incident occurred near the Driver/Owner parking lot of Richmond International Raceway following the NASCAR Nationwide Series race on Friday, April 26th. Several members of another race team confronted a group that included Nelson Piquet Jr., resulting in the arrest of two individuals from the other race team. TSM will have no further comment on the incident as the matter is an active case with the Henrico Police Department.

Update: NASCAR found that Richard Childress Racing crew members Thomas Costello and Michael Scearce were in violation of Sections 12-1 (actions detrimental to stock car racing) of the NASCAR rule book. Both crew members were suspended for four Nationwide Series events, and both were each fined  $15,000. They were also put on NASCAR probation until the end of the calendar year.

Update 2: Richard Childress Racing appealed the penalties handed down by NASCAR. After reviewing the facts,  the National Stock Car Racing Appeals Panel decided to uphold the original penalties. RCR can now appeal this decision to the ational Stock Car Racing Chief Appellate Officer John Middlebrook.

Piquet also made two Nationwide starts last season, winning the Sargento 200 at Road America from the pole. He finished in the top 10 in both of his starts.

No word on who will replace Piquet in the team’s No. 30 Camping World Truck Series Chevy. But, Jeb Burton has signed with the team. And, James Buescher will return to the CWTS to defend his title.

In related news, Justin Allgaier will also return to TSM for 2013, continuing his relationship with the newly renamed team, and his sponsor, Brandt.

Allgaier piloted the No. 31 TSM Chevy to two wins, 12 Top 5s, and 36 Top 10s. He also earned one win with Penske Racing.

It has also been rumored that Danica Patrick will drive 10 races for the team in the Nationwide Series in 2013.

Related Stories

• Patrick Expected To Run For Turner Motorsports In N’Wide
• Buescher Could Move To Nationwide Series In 2013
• Burton Signs With Turner Motorsports

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.”

Passing Parker Kligerman with 10 laps left, Sauter won Friday night’s Winstar World Casino 350 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race to claim his second victory of the season. Both of Sauter’s wins have come at the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway.

Sauter finished 2.199 seconds ahead of Kligerman, who came home second. Nelson Piquet Jr. ran third, followed by Kyle Busch and Ty Dillon, who trimmed six points off series leader James Buescher’s advantage with two races left in the season.

Sauter roared past Piquet, the polesitter, on Lap 100 and quickly began to stretch his advantage. The margin reached nearly three seconds, but soon the handling of Sauter’s truck began to deteriorate, and Kligerman cut the edge to less than a second before the lead-lap trucks began a round of green-flag pit stops on Lap 113.

Sauter is the third driver to sweep both races at Texas in the same year. Brendan Gaughan and Ron Hornaday Jr. also accomplished the feat, with Gaughan doing it twice.

Sauter’s winning average speed of 154.737 mph was a series record for the track.

Quick pit work on a two-tire stop put Kligerman in the lead by more than three seconds over Sauter by the time the pits stops cycled through. Sauter, on four new tires, caught and passed the No. 7 truck on lap 137 of 147.

“I looked up (after the pits stops), and he was pretty far out there, and I was like, ‘Oh, boy,’” Sauter said. “At that point they kept telling me my laps times, telling me I was two, three, four tenths faster than him per lap, and I knew that, with as much time as there was left in the race — 20 or 25 laps — I didn’t think (two tires would) prevail.

“I just knew it was a matter of time. As fast as we reeled him in, I just figured there was plenty of time.”

The two-tire call was a spur of the moment decision, but not everyone was immediately on the same page. Kligerman’s jack man raised the left side of the car before getting the message that new left-side tires, which had been placed over the pit wall, wouldn’t be required. The process of raising the car and dropping the jack cost Kligerman several seconds.

“The whole two-tire stop thing — I was thinking it,” Kligerman said. “I didn’t key up the radio. I didn’t say anything. Then I came down pit road, and I guess (crew chief) Chad (Kendrick) saw something the 30 (Piquet) did or the 13 (Sauter), and just said, ‘Hey, let’s take two.’

“But the pit crew… our jack man didn’t quite get the message, I guess. It was a spur-of-the-moment audible, as they say in football. He got the jack up, and that probably lost us about four seconds, and it might have been the difference between winning and losing, but we win and lose as a team.”

After a restart from the second spot on Lap 70 Buescher reported a vibration in his No. 30 Chevrolet and began to fall back through the field. On Lap 95, Buescher lost the ninth position to Justin Lofton, and with Dillon running fifth at the time, faced the prospect of losing a significant portion of the 21-point series lead he held entering the race.

Buescher held on to finish 11th and leaves Texas with a 15-point advantage.

Note: The race tied an NCWTS track record for fewest cautions (two) and set a new mark for fewest caution laps (eighth). The last 78 laps were run under the green flag.

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.

What looked like a disaster early on for Nelson Piquet Jr. — a spin on lap 56 — turned fortuitous as green flags clicked by to close the VFW 200 at Michigan International Speedway.

Piquet and crew chief Chris Carrier employed a brilliant — and race-winning — strategy to capture the Brazilian’s first victory in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. The duo chose to stay out on the race track while the front-runners pitted under green, and milked a huge lead that ballooned to over 15 seconds with seven laps remaining.

“Me and Chris have been fighting for this win since the beginning of last year and we finally made it,” Piquet said. “It came in a dramatic way, but it came. It doesn’t matter how, but we did it and I’m really happy that the whole team stayed behind me this whole time. It is a little weight off my back and for the whole family. I am just living to do what our family always did, win races and win championships.”

Piquet, whose father Nelson is a three-time Formula One champion, led the first 13 laps, stalked by Kurt Busch early on. Busch, the 2000 truck series rookie of the year, had not started a NASCAR Camping World Truck race since June 30, 2001. Busch eventually took the lead on lap 17, and led a race-high 57 laps.

On lap 56, Piquet was racing Busch hard coming out of Turn 2. The two trucks tapped, with Piquet the victim — or so it seemed at the time. The spin forced Piquet to pit road, which put him on a different pit cycle than the rest of the field. That allowed the Brazilian to run the remainder of the race without a pit stop, a side effect that eventually led to Victory Lane.

Piquet is the first Brazilian to win a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race and only the second driver born outside the United States to win a truck race (Canadian Ron Fellows is the other). Piquet joined the series in 2010 after a two-year stint in F1. This 2012 season has been by far his most successful, with victories coming in the K&N Pro Series East, the NASCAR Nationwide Series and, now, the trucks.

“I want to prove to fans that I can win in any car that they put me into,” Piquet said.

Jason White (second) and Dakoda Armstrong (third) each posted career-best finishes. Parker Kligerman, who ran his first race with Red Horse Racing, and James Buescher rounded out the top five.

Piquet’s truck, from the outset, looked like a winning one — until the fateful spin.

“After they revived me,” Carrier joked, “we just had to push reset and take the situation at that moment. [I said] we’re going to regroup here. All the decisions at that point were no-brainers.”

After the spin, Piquet entered the pits for new tires and a tank full of fuel. Carrier deciphered that if Piquet went full-throttle for the remainder of the race, he’d be a lap and a half short on gas.

In other words, Piquet was forced to practice something quite foreign to a race-car driver: slow down. That’s exactly what he did. On lap 90, Piquet turned a lap of 184.952 mph. On lap 100, the final lap, he was going 158.580 mph.

“I knew that Nelson is very good at saving fuel,” Carrier said. “It comes very natural to him.”

The difficult decision — whether to pit or not to pit — did not come easy. With eight laps remaining, Carrier waved off the call for Piquet to enter the pits.

“We kind of just rolled the dice,” Carrier said. “We changed our minds three times in one lap.”

The win moved Piquet up to eighth in points. Timothy Peters, who finished 13th, remains the standings leader, but in a points tie with rookie Ty Dillon. Peters wins the tie-breaker thanks to his victory at Iowa in July.

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.

A regular in the NASCAR Camping World Truck series, Piquet Jr. used his first career pole and laps led to earn his very first NASCAR national series win on the Wisconsin road course. In his third career NASCAR Nationwide start, the native of Brazil drove a flawless final 17 laps with the lead, earning a 2.258-second victory over runner-up Michael McDowell. He led a race-high 19 laps and also becomes the first Brazilian to win a NASCAR national series race.

“It’s difficult to put into words what I’m feeling,” Piquet Jr. said. “I think we had a great week since the first practice. I learned the track quite quickly and the team helped me out quite a bit.”

Piquet didn’t fight too hard for the lead until after the halfway mark, but that was a strategic move in order to save fuel in case there was a green-white-checkered finish like last year where the 4.048-mile course caused mayhem on pit crews trying to have enough fuel to finish the race.

“I could have fought harder in the middle of the race but there was no reason why,” Piquet said. “I wasn’t going to accomplish anything. I just held back a little bit and when it was the right moment I attacked. It was on one of the restarts where I passed Jacques [Villeneuve] and moved quick through the field and led the race at the end.”

McDowell and Ron Fellows finished where they started, at second and third respectively. Max Papis and Sam Hornish Jr. rounded out the top five.

“We had a really good car,” McDowell said. “The problem was I used up my car a little too much to get into second and then on that final restart I tried to be a little smart and anticipate Nelson trying to go a little early and tuck in behind him but Danica [Patrick] was right there. I kind of knew if I gave up a little bit to be at the bottom it would be worth it, but I just never got to the bottom. I tried to run down Nelson but his car was fast. I don’t know if we would have had anything for him if we would have stayed with him on that restart. I think he was saving a little bit on fuel, because when he needed to go it seemed like he could.”

The Sargento 200 had a tamer finish than last year, which had three green-white-checker finishes. Things did get a little interesting when one of the big names from last year, Villeneuve, made contact with Danica Patrick in Turn 5 on the final lap, which spun Patrick, dropping her from fourth to 12th, her eventual finish.

Villeneuve finished sixth, followed by Brian Scott, Kurt Bush, Cole Whitt and Justin Allgaier.

Patrick had a near-flawless day up until her greeting with Villeneueve on the last lap. Villeneueve said after the race though that he was not trying to wreck Patrick at all.

“We were racing hard and I wasn’t fighting with Danica,” Villeneuve said. “I was fighting with Max Papis and just before the braking, I guess he was wanting to cross over and go to the inside of Danica. He probably didn’t know I was there, so it pushed me in the grass. You don’t slowdown that much in the grass, so by that time I was on the racetrack again, I was going a little bit faster than Danica. That’s all.”

The race started with Piquet leading, but that didn’t last long as McDowell took the lead on Lap 3. Busch, who had to start 34th after having unapproved adjustments made to his car, made his way all the way up to 17th. McDowell and Piquet Jr. would end up pitting on Lap 6 for fuel, allowing Fellows to grab the lead.

With Fellows starting to pull away from the pack, a punctured tire slowed down all of Fellows’ momentum, causing him to enter the pits on Lap 9. Brian Scott was the beneficiary of that, allowing him to take the lead. Patrick, who started 10th, would make her way up to second place by Lap 11 and stay in the top five for most of the race.

T.J. Bell had a problem in Turn 14 on Lap 13, leading to the first caution of the day. Many of the drivers made their way to the pits, with Allgaier having to spend some extra time there while his pit crew had to help remove a water bottle that had fallen underneath his gas pedal.

With the caution lasting multiple laps, Scott was one of the last drivers to pit, surrendering his lead to McDowell. Papis would end up taking the lead from McDowell on Turn 3 of Lap 16. It wouldn’t be long until the next caution, however, as loose debris would cause another yellow flag.

After that caution, Miguel Paludo was the new leader, with Patrick running in second place. Patrick would make her move on Paludo on Turn 3 of Lap 21 to take the lead, but a little slide by Patrick in Turn 5 would give the lead right back to Paludo.

Another caution would take place when Kenny Habul went into the tire wall at Turn 5. Villeneuve was in the lead at the time. With the leaders pitting, Papis would be hit with a stop and go penalty and would have to return to the pits. Hornish Jr., who like many was trying to manage fuel, took the lead in Lap 33.

Turn 5 had some more action a little after that when Villeneuve was bumped in the back by McDowell. Villeneuve would drop from the top five all the way down to 22nd. Another caution involving Bell would slow everything down again. The leaders would pit again, hoping to make it the rest of the way with the fuel they had. This time Piquet Jr. would take the lead for the final time.

Allgaier would have an issue with his front left tire and wound up in the gravel on Turn 5 on Lap 37, hitting Busch on his way there. Points leader Elliot Sadler would get spun on Lap 39 and finished in 15th place. The series’ top rookie Austin Dillon remained second in the points with an 18th place finish. Dillon, who is 11 points behind Sadler, had issues with his car, which kept him out of contention.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who has been in the middle of a major slump, finished 11th and remains third in points, 23 behind Sadler. Hornish Jr. and Whitt round out the top 5 in the standings, with Patrick holding firm in the 10th spot.

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.