Busch finished .834 seconds ahead of Nationwide Series leader Sam Hornish Jr. to claim his sixth win at the two-mile track and the ninth straight for Joe Gibbs Racing, extending the record for consecutive victories for a Nationwide car owner at a single speedway.

With his third trip to Victory Lane in five starts this season, Busch also extended his own record for career wins in the series, pushing that number to 54. The six wins at a single track ties his personal best; Busch also has six NNS victories at Charlotte.

After the race, Busch seemed just as cognizant of JGR’s failure to win a Sprint Cup event at Fontana as he was elated at keeping the Nationwide streak alive.

“I think it’s pretty cool that you can see a team go to a race track and dominate like that in a series,” Busch said, “although it’s really, really awkward, because we’ve got nine in a row here in the Nationwide Series, and JGR has yet to win a Cup race here.

“That’s quite an odd stat, but I know (polesitter) Denny Hamlin is really good here for (Sunday’s Auto Club 400 Cup race). And I think we’re OK for (Sunday), too, so hopefully we can change that.”

Regan Smith rallied from a lap down — the result of an early flat tire — to claim third, with Parker Kligerman running fourth in a Toyota owned by Busch. Austin Dillon came home fifth, followed by rookie Kyle Larson.

Elliott Sadler, Brian Scott, Trevor Bayne and rookie Kevin Swindell completed the top 10.

Hornish led by more than a half second over Busch when Jason White’s spin through the frontstretch grass caused the fourth caution of the afternoon on Lap 110.

Brad Keselowski stayed on the track under the caution and led Hornish and Busch (who took fuel only under the yellow) to the green flag on Lap 116. Before the cars reached Turn 1, however, Hornish had reclaimed the top spot from his Penske Racing teammate, with Busch in hot pursuit.

Hornish held the point until Busch passed him on Lap 126, and from that point on Busch paced the field. Busch conceded that Hornish may have had the better car, but Busch found a line — or, more accurately, a variety of lines — that worked in the late going.

“I don’t think we were the best car, but I got up on the wheel there at the end and just chased down that 12 (Hornish),” Busch said. “He was really, really good today. I didn’t want to see him win here in front of our home-town crowd of (sponsor) Monster Energy folks that were in the stands and, of course, the Toyota folks that were here today.

“So we got up on the wheel, like I said, and just tried to push hard as far as I could. I ran the top side for a little bit, ran him down, got there and was able to do like a draft move by him.”

Hornish was gaining on Busch in the closing laps until his No. 12 Ford scraped the wall.

“We just didn’t have enough to be able to beat Kyle today,” Hornish said. “I ran hard and got the lead on the restart a couple of times. He’d run real hard throughout the first 50 to 75 percent of a run, slide the car around, wear it out, and then we’d catch him in the last 25 percent.

“We were doing it again on the last run. I got within about 10 car lengths of him and got a little greedy, drove it in a little bit too hard and got into the wall. But we want to win races as bad as we want to lead the points. When there was still smoke inside the car halfway down the back straightaway, I was a little bit worried that we were going to end up with a flat tire, and I was going to look real bad. So I’m just glad that things worked out as well as they did.”

Hornish increased his series lead to 28 points over Smith, who passed 11th-place finisher Justin Allgaier for second in the standings. Scott remained third in points, 31 behind Hornish and one ahead of Allgaier in fourth place.

Notes: Kligerman’s fourth-place finish was a career best in the series… Brian Vickers’ day ended with an engine failure after 53 laps. He finished 34th and dropped six spots to 11th in the standings.

As Stewart dodged the crash and crossed the finish line, the front clip of Larson’s car sheared off, ripping the engine out of its compartment. The front suspension and engine ended up on the walkway at the bottom of the stands.

A tire from Larson’s car also flew into the grandstands.

Regan Smith led as the cars approached the checkered flag, but Smith tried to block Brad Keselowski, who was running second, and turned across the nose of Keselowski’s car.

Daytona International Speedway president Joie Chitwood III indicated that 14 spectators were transported to medical facilities off-property and 14 others were treated on site.

“First and foremost, our thoughts and prayers are with our race fans,” Chitwood said. “On the incident, we responded appropriately according to our safety protocols and had emergency medical personnel at the incident immediately.

“We transported 14 people off property and treated 14 people at our on-track care center.”

Chitwood referred questions about the conditions of the injured fans to Halifax Medical Center.

“I’d have to refer you to Halifax for any of the conditions of the patients,” Chitwood said.

Byron Cogdell, spokesperson from Halifax Health, said seven spectators had been transported to Halifax Medical with injuries related to the accident, five more spectators for other issues. Two of the injured spectators, one adult and one child, were in critical condition, though all patients were listed as stable.

The adult who was in critical condition was suffering from head trauma, Cogdell said. Halifax has not released the names of the injured pending notification of and consent from their families.

Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s senior vice president of racing operations, said all drivers involved in the last-lap crash had been treated and released from the infield care center.

As Chitwood and O’Donnell spoke, and with Sunday’s Daytona 500 17 hours away, track workers continued the process of repairing the fencing in the area of the crossover gate, approximately 75 yards short of the start/finish line at the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

“We’re very confident that we’ll be ready for (Sunday’s) event, with the 55th running of the Daytona 500,” O’Donnell said. “But, as with any of these incidents, we’ll conduct a thorough review. We’ll work closely with the tracks as with all our events, learn what we can and see what we can apply in the future.”

The emergency in the grandstand tempered Stewart’s fifth victory in his last six February races at Daytona and the 11th Nationwide Series win of his career.

“Fortunately, with the way the event’s equipped up, there were plenty of emergency workers ready to go, and they jumped in on it pretty quickly,” NASCAR president Mike Helton told ESPN. “And right now, it’s just a function of trying to determine what all damage is done.

“They’re moving folks, as we’ve seen, to care centers and taking some folks over to Halifax Medical (Center), so we’ll be able to update later on, but right now, all we know is everybody’s working real hard on determining what all happened.”

Larson climbed from his car almost immediately and was evaluated and released from the infield care center.

Drivers, Larson included, were more concerned with the safety of the fans than the outcome of the race.

“The important thing is what’s going on on the frontstretch right now,” Stewart said after climbing from his car. “We’ve always known since racing was started this is a dangerous sport. But it’s hard. We assume that risk. It’s hard when the fans get caught up in it.

“As much as we want to celebrate right now, as much as this is a big deal to us, I’m more worried about the drivers and fans in the stands right now. I could see it all in the mirror and it didn’t look good from where I was either.”

Smith said he wasn’t about to surrender the victory to Keselowski 200 yards from the finish line, but his first thoughts were with the injured spectators.

“Everybody the only thing I’m concerned about right now is the people in the stands,” Smith posted to his Twitter account after the race. “Praying for all who were affected by the accident.”

Keselowski echoed the concern and said he understood Smith’s attempt to block his move.

“We made a move to try and win the race,” Keselowski said. “We were in the catbird seat. Regan was in a good spot. He was first and I was second, and we were pushing. I kind of had the run and the move to win the race, and Regan obviously tried to block it, and that’s understandable.

Sam Hornish Jr. crossed the stripe in second place, followed by rookie Alex Bowman, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Parker Kligerman.

The last-lap wreck wasn’t the only serious incident of the event. A 13-car wreck in Turns 1 and 2, triggered by contact between the No. 43 Ford Mustang of Michael Annett and the No. 3 Chevrolet Camaro of Austin Dillon — both championship hopefuls — stopped the race after 116 laps and set up the finish.

Annett was transported to Halifax Health Medical Center. Richard Petty Motorsports later reported that Annett, whose car slammed the outside wall nose-first, was treated for bruising on his chest and received a CT scan. He remains in the hospital for further observation.

Kligerman drove for Penske Racing in the Nationwide Series before being released in favor of Ryan Blaney. He drove for Brad Keselowski Racing in the Camping World Truck Series before being released from that ride in favor of Blaney.

He won the fred’s 250 Powered By Coca-Cola at Talladega Superspeedway driving for Red Horse Racing.

KBM may also field a Camping World Truck Series entry for Darrell Wallace Jr.

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• Sadler To Drive For JGR In Nationwide Series In 2013
• Blaney To Drive For Penske Racing In Nationwide Series

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.

Johnny Sauter pushed Kligerman to the lead on the white-flag lap, and Kligerman held the top spot when a massive wreck on the backstretch forced NASCAR to throw the yellow before Kligerman reached the finish line.

The victory was Kligerman’s first after five second-place finishes during the past two seasons. It was a vindication of sorts for a driver who was jettisoned from his ride with Brad Keselowski Racing and found a new home with Red Horse Racing.

“When you get so close to something so many times, you can pick two paths,” Kligerman said of his second-place runs. “You can doubt yourself, you can doubt the situation you’re in, you can doubt everything around you. Or you can keep your self-confidence and look at the positive of what you did to get yourself in that position each and every time and say, ‘Hey, if I can do that, it’s just a matter of time.’

“I feel like switching teams — all the things that have happened — this team gave me a ton of confidence. Halfway through the season, it looked like my career was not on the upward slope I’d hoped it would be on. We were fifth in points, we weren’t really achieving a lot, we were getting slower as a team, and I felt like my career was looking at a position where I was not going to be a part of NASCAR much longer.

“There is a vindication ’cause we won. Winning fixes everything, I like to say.”

The truck Kligerman drove now has been to Victory Lane in three superspeedway races.

“This is a magic truck,” said DeLoach, who won for the 10th time in his 300th start as an owner. “This truck that Parker was driving has won Daytona twice. It won Daytona earlier this year with John King, and now it wins Talladega, so it’s a pretty special truck to us.”

Sauter ran second, followed by James Buescher and Ty Dillon. Timothy Peters came home fifth. Dillon maintained a one-point lead over Buescher in the series standings.

Buescher was just as happy to escape Talladega with no change in the championship battle, especially after saving his truck from spinning out of control on the next-to-last lap.

“I’m satisfied with the day,” Buescher said. “You always want to gain, but not losing is good, too. Definitely, with what happened in the tri-oval coming to the white flag, we could have been 25th. The fact that I was able to hang on to it and hang on to a third-place finish makes it a really good day.”

On Lap 46, contact from John Wes Townley’s Toyota turned the Toyota of Ross Chastain into the outside wall, igniting a chain-reaction wreck that also collected the trucks of two-time series champion Todd Bodine and Johnny Chapman (watch).

Fourteen laps later, a melee on the frontstretch damaged the truck of another former champion, Ron Hornaday, and knocked last week’s Las Vegas winner, Nelson Piquet Jr., and Donnie Neuenberger out of the race (watch).

Justin Lofton led the field to a restart on Lap 66, pulling Peters and Kurt Busch with him. Ten laps later Hornaday’s spin, the result of a cut tire, caused the fifth caution, with Lofton still in the lead. During the yellow, Kligerman’s team changed the battery on the No. 7 Toyota after the gauges registered a voltage drop.

Kligerman restarted 21st, but before the field completed two laps, the driver of the No. 7 Tundra had pushed the No. 23 Ford of Jason White from 18th to the lead.

White and Kligerman were running 1-2 when Hornaday spun again in the tri-oval, his right-rear tire shredded.

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.

Taking advantage of Kyle Busch’s brush with the wall in the late going, pole-sitter Ty Dillon won going away in Friday night’s Jeff Foxworthy’s Grit Chips 200 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the first victory for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series rookie.

Busch ran second, 3.227 seconds behind the race winner. James Buescher finished third, followed by Parker Kligerman and Aric Almirola. Series leader Timothy Peters came home 13th.

Dillon, 20, grandson of team owner Richard Childress, is third in the standings, nine points behind Peters, as he tries to duplicate the NCWTS championship won by 22-year-old brother Austin Dillon last year.

“I’m just so happy for how hard we’ve worked,” said Ty Dillon. “It’s our rookie year, and we’re battling for the championship. My team doesn’t give up.

“Man, I’m just so happy and so excited. I finally won a NASCAR race. It’s been my whole life, and to finally do it means so much. Man, it’s awesome.”

Busch, Buescher (second in the standings, six points back) and Dillon swapped the lead between them eight times in a 25-lap stretch before Busch began to pull away. After a cycle of green-flag stops that started with Dillon’s trip down pit road on lap 82, Busch held a five-second lead, but a caution for debris on the backstretch on Lap 105 slowed the race and bunched the field.

Lead-lap trucks came to pit road on Lap 106, eliminating the need for fuel conservation the rest of the way. After a restart on Lap 110, Busch pulled away to a one-second lead as Dillon and Buescher battled for second behind him.

But Busch scraped the wall on the final run and damaged his truck, allowing Dillon to overtake him for the lead on Lap 125 of 130.

Busch said Dillon’s truck was simply better.

“He had a lot better handle on the bottom of the race track than we did, especially throughout the longer run,” Busch said. “He could hold the bottom better than I could. There, when it’s time to race, when a guy catches you, you’ve got to go somewhere else.

“You’ve got to go to the top, and you try to push and get sideways and hit the fence. There’s no room to catch it up there. It was all I could do to push it as hard as I could.”

Bad luck continued to haunt four-time champion Ron Hornaday Jr., still seeking his first victory since joining Joe Denette Motorsports at the end of the season. On Lap 37, contact from the truck of Tim George Jr. trapped Hornaday against the outside wall in a wreck that also collected Jason White’s Ford.

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.

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.

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.