(WOMR file photo)
Stop me if you have heard this one this season……… Kyle Busch wins the Nationwide race this weekend. Busch won the Indiana 250 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the second different winner in as many years. It is the eighth win for KyBu this season, leading 92 of 100 laps, and the 59th win in 259 races of his Nationwide career. It is his fifth victory from the pole this season, braking a single season record. Earlier in the day, Busch had won his 31st NNS pole, breaking a tie with Mark Martin for the all-time lead in that category.
Even with a car that was clearly the class of the field, Kyle Busch had some anxious moments in closing laps of Saturday’s Indiana 250 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Busch beat runner-up Brian Scott to the finish line by 2.141 seconds, however, it does not tell the difficulty Busch experienced on the final restart on Lap 95 of 100, when Joey Logano squeezed Busch into Turn 1 and allowed Scott to take the lead.
After shadowing Scott for nearly three laps, Busch finally made the winning pass, putting an exclamation point on a dominant performance that saw him lead 92 laps.
“I had no friends around me on the restart,” Busch said of the final run. “On the restart before, I had (Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Matt)Kenseth behind me, and he pushed me and got me clear of the 22 (Logano). There on that final restart, (Kevin)Harvick was hanging back a little bit trying to get a run…
“I got down into (Turn) 1 and just lost all grip. I just slid. I was turning left, turning right, trying not to get into (Joey)Logano. I got into him and we chased up the race track. I was watching my mirror at the same time, trying to see if anybody was coming, and here comes the 2 (Scott) out of nowhere, and he got by us there. It made it tough to pass him back.”
Eventually, Busch got Scott loose and seized the opening, leaving Scott to second-guess his approach to the last six laps.
Scott’s second-place run was the best of his career in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Logano came home third, followed by Brian Vickers and Harvick.
As the highest finishing Nationwide regular qualified for the fourth leg of Nationwide’s Dash4Cash, Brian Vickers claimed the final $100,000 bonus and won an additional $100,000 for Pam Nabors of Santa Cruz, Calif., the fan who was paired with Vickers in the Dash4Cash finale.
Nabors is a second cousin to actor Jim Nabors, who is a fixture at the Indianapolis 500 with his rendition of “Back Home Again in Indiana.”
Busch was on pit road on Lap 65 when NASCAR called the second caution of the race because of fluid from Sam Hornish Jr.’s overheating engine.
Busch, however, stayed on the lead lap and regained the top spot when all the lead-lap cars ahead of him came to pit road for service under the yellow. With many drivers who came to pit road under yellow opting for new right-side tires only — among them Trevor Bayne, Vickers, Harvick, and Paul Menard — Busch, on four new tires, led the field to a restart on Lap 71 with a tire advantage over most of the competition.
Logano, who had come to pit road under green on Lap 64, kept pace with Busch for two laps after the restart, but by Lap 75, the driver of the No. 54 Toyota had opened an advantage of more than one second. Busch’s lead had grown to more than two seconds by Lap 84, when Nelson Piquet Jr. brushed the wall and dropped debris on the track to cause the third caution.
A multicar incident on Lap 89 caused the final caution and set up the six-lap run to the finish.
Check out the unofficial results of the Indiana 250.
TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!
