Joey Logano once again gets the better of record- setting teammate Kyle Busch
Kyle Busch set or tied two long-standing records in the Nationwide Series race at Kansas Speedway, had the dominant car, led the most laps … then watched almost-certain victory slip away in the final few laps.
Once again, it was Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Joey Logano, who spoiled Busch’s seemingly perfect afternoon and went to victory lane instead. Busch led five times for 173 of 200 laps, but those numbers weren’t enough in the Kansas Lottery 300. The 19-year-old Logano, who had a good – but not great – car most of the afternoon, lined up second behind Busch on a restart with six laps to go, challenged him side by side, almost lost control, then charged around the No. 18 Toyota with four laps remaining to claim his fourth victory of the year.
In all four of those wins, Logano has passed Busch late in the race and left Busch with a runnerup finish.
After the race, instead of people talking about the record Busch set – he’s led 2,226 laps this year, breaking the series mark of 2,127 laps set by two-time champion Sam Ard in 1984 – the talk instead was about Busch’s season, which is sounding like a broken record. The same theme is repeating over and over and over: He has the dominant car, leads the most laps – something he’s done in 13 of 29 races – then somehow loses the race, usually near the end.
Seconds after Logano blew by Busch coming out of Turn 4, a frustrated Busch radioed his crew.
“I’m so tired of finishing second to that [expletive]. [Expletive] me,” Busch said.
While Busch is obviously keeping score of the 1-2 finishes he’s lost to Logano, after the race, Logano seemed surprised when informed he’d won his four Nationwide races this year in that fashion.
“Is it every one I’ve got the same way? I think it is,” he said. “Four out of five [career wins] – that’s interesting to me. I never think that.”
Logano had his own monkey on his back, although not of his own doing. Reporters and almost everyone else he talked to during the race weekend asked him about his scary crash in the Sprint Cup race the previous weekend at Dover. The big question: Would the violent barrel-rolls that destroyed his car make him hesitant behind the wheel?
Logano said it wouldn’t. Then he let his driving do the talking.
“I needed a win to stop everyone talking about me, if I’m going to be all right after that roll,” he said. “I think this should prove it. … I don’t think 90 percent of these drivers think about that. If you barrel-roll a car like that and come out OK, it will give you confidence to drive even harder.”
Logano’s crew chief, Dave Rogers, said the fact that Logano is not racing for the series title – as is Busch – gave the team freedom to make some bold changes during pit stops.
“Our teammate beat us all day. They just had a better race car, a faster race car … I knew they were better than us,” Rogers said. “We had Joey in the car here, and we’re not points racing, we’re here to win, so we were throwing the kitchen sink at it. We were throwing a ‘Hail Mary’ every single pit stop.”
The adjustments worked, thanks in large part to some courageous driving on Logano’s part. The driver who some wondered about after that wild Dover crash made one risky three-wide move pay off late in the race (“It’s the end of the race and you have to make some desperate moves sometimes,” he explained) and summarized his late-race strategy thusly: “I was driving my brains out and it was fun.”
It wasn’t any fun for his teammate, who after venting his frustration on the radio calmed down a bit for his postrace news conference.
“Unfortunately, I got beat by another driver,” Busch said. “It just wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t our day today, I guess. Unfortunately, we’re sitting here talking about a second-place finish.”
Oh, by the way, while Busch began the race by challenging and then breaking Ard’s laps-led record, his runnerup finish earned him a share of a more dubious record: It was his 10th runnerup finish of 2009, matching the series mark set by Jack Ingram in 1983.
If there was a silver lining for Busch, it’s that he boosted his lead in the Nationwide standings. Main challenger Carl Edwards finished seventh after having several problems, including a pit-road speeding penalty, damage to the front of his car and a tire issue. Busch, who entered the race with a 211-point lead over Edwards, left
Kansas with a 245-point margin on Edwards with six races left. Brad Keselowski, who finished third, is third in the standings, 307 points behind.
That’s small consolation for Busch, the driver who doesn’t worry about points, but drives to win. Busch has six wins this year, but hasn’t won since July 18 at Gateway International Raceway, a stretch of 10 races.
If Busch was hungry for a win, Logano may have been hungrier.
“Dave probably gave me the biggest pep talk I’ve ever had before the race started,” Logano said. “That’s something that goes a long way for me. You pump me up, I go. … He asked me before the last restart how hungry I was and I said, ‘I’m starving.’”
