Triple Crown: Kyle Busch sweeps Bristol race weekend
Third degree: Kyle Busch worked over the Sprint Cup field tonight at Bristol to record his historic sweep.
// Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Illustrated
BRISTOL, Tenn. – Kyle Busch got the last laugh. And a spot in the record book.
A day after his run-in with Brad Keselowski in the Nationwide Series race, and approximately three hours after Keselowski referred to Busch as “an ass” during driver introductions, Busch became the first driver to sweep three NASCAR series races in one week.
Saturday night’s win in the Irwin Tools Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway was the feather in his cap, coming after victories in the Truck Series race here on Wednesday and Friday night’s Nationwide Series event.
“Who?” Busch said when asked about Keselowski’s earlier comment.
“I saw it,” he said of Keselowski’s No. 12 Dodge. “I passed it.”
Busch passed Keselowski, and a host of others, en route to scoring his third win of the season in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series.
The 25-year-old led four times for 282 laps, including the final 72. His Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota slipped across the finish line 0.677 second ahead of Michael Waltrip Racing’s David Reutimann.
Jamie McMurray (Earnhardt Ganassi Racing), Clint Bowyer (Richard Childress Racing) and Kasey Kahne (Richard Petty Motorsports) completed the top five in the series’ 24th stop.
“Coming through the field was fun,” Busch said, “passing some of those guys and working traffic, just picking your way. Do you go high? Do you go low? You had to have a car that would really work everywhere.
“When you come so close [to sweeping races in three different series] and don’t get it done, it’s pretty frustrating. Last year we won the truck race, were leading the Nationwide race and got crashed out, and ended up winning the Cup race. So it was probably a year delayed. But I’m real appreciative of what happened tonight. It’s pretty special.
“Coming to Bristol, you could say, well yeah we should run well here. But it’s cool to be able to put it all together in a complete weekend.”
On paper, Busch’s 19th career Cup win looked easy. Behind the wheel, it was anything but effortless. He didn’t take the lead until lap 172 of the 500-lap event, and had to survive several battles for the top spot over the remainder of the event.
Busch and defending series champion Jimmie Johnson staged the first tussle, trading the lead back and forth five times between laps 171-256.
But Johnson, who led 175 of the first 255 laps, saw his night, and his chances of victory, end after a crash on lap 262.
Second on the restart, Johnson spun and collected the wall in Turn 3 following contact from Juan Pablo Montoya. Although he eventually returned to the track, Johnson finished 35th, 85 laps down.
McMurray began tracking down Busch, and by lap 389 had moved to the front during a long green-flag run. Busch won the race off pit road when both pitted under green on lap 399, and when the caution flew moments later, for debris on the backstretch, they trailed Reutimann with just 60 laps remaining.
Reutimann, ill two days earlier, managed to hold off Busch’s advances for 25 laps, but finally saw the No. 18 go shooting past with 72 laps remaining.
“It’s just me trying to stay ahead of him and getting back to the gas a little early,” Reutimann said. “We got together, but we were just racing…. When he got by me, I just got loose. I made a mistake … he was getting faster and we were getting tighter, so I think we were just prolonging the inevitable.”
McMurray overcame a pit-road miscue – he slid through his pit stall, losing four positions on pit road during the night’s first round of stops, then fell back out of the top 10 once again under the next caution when he had to return to pit road for a missing lug nut.
“My pit stall was just a lot slicker than what I expected, and it only cost us like three or four spots, I think, the first time,” McMurray said. “The lug nut cost us quite a bit.
“Certainly this race track is very raceable. If you have a good car you can pass on it. And it really wasn't that big a deal. We went to the back and I passed about 10 cars the first set of tires. We passed like 10 cars the next set of tires, and then we had that long run and I drove to the lead.”
Busch jumped five positions with the win, and will head to Atlanta in two weeks third in points. Kevin Harvick (RCR) scratched out a 14th-place finish despite problems with his No. 29 Chevrolet, and continues to lead the standings. Jeff Gordon, who finished 11th, trails Harvick by 279, but clinched a spot in this year’s Chase For The Sprint Cup.
