Kurt Busch had strategy and luck on his side. Tony Stewart had neither.
That’s how Busch wound up ending his 29-race winless string Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in the rain-shortened Lenox Industrial Tools 301, while the frustrated Stewart simply added another disheartening loss to his own winless string that has reached 31 races.
The swagger had vanished, and the cocky confidence went with it. A two-week slump sent Kyle Busch spiraling into crankiness despite his hold atop the points standings. With a win Sunday at Infineon Raceway, his mood instantly lifted.
Busch snapped his mini-slump by racing to his first Sprint Cup Series win on a road course with a Toyota that was so bad during practice he was certain he’d wreck.
Instead, he made his series-high fifth visit to Victory Lane this season.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. is enjoying that old winning feel and he doesn’t much care what his detractors have to say about it. The most popular driver in NASCAR won this one by gambling, somehow going the last 55 laps on the two-mile oval, including three laps of overtime, without stopping for gas.
Kasey Kahne and team director Kenny Francis sat on the podium to answer questions after a dominant performance to win the Pocono 500 on Sunday and promptly were asked whether they doubted themselves and their Gillett Evernham Motorsports team before winning the All-Star race less than a month ago. Apparently not, and Francis backed it up with a rundown of how well they had done this season up until that point. There’s certainly no reason to doubt themselves after two points wins in three weeks — three wins in four counting the cash-only All-Star race — have propelled Kahne from 14th and outside the Chase cutoff up to ninth.
No matter how bad the race is, and this one was the snoozer of the season, Kyle Busch and his team find a way to win. Busch easily won the Best Buy 400 on Sunday, his fourth Sprint Cup victory of the year, without making a single on-track pass for the lead. Quick work in the pits under green-flag stops put Busch out front in the No. 18 Toyota with 163 laps to go. Except for a brief reshuffling for the last green-flag stops, that’s where he stayed.
Kasey Kahne didn’t need the popular vote to get him into Victory Lane at Lowe’s Motor Speedway for the second time in eight days. Kahne, who won last week’s All-Star race at LMS after being voted by fans into the main event, took advantage of Tony Stewart’s misfortune with three laps remaining to capture Sunday night’s Coca-Cola 600. The victory snapped a 52-race losing streak for the 28-year-old, whose last points win was here in the 2006 fall race.
Kyle Busch felt like he gave one away Saturday night, and Carl Edwards was already stewing on how he would spend the winner’s $1 million purse. Greg Biffle was poised for a Sunday stroll to Victory Lane. But when the checkers flew over the Sprint All-Star Challenge at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, the guy who had planned to watch the race from his couch with a few cold beers was standing in the winner’s circle, drenched in a few dozen cold beers.
See, Kasey Kahne wouldn’t even have been in the main event were it not for an online fan vote, one that propels the highest vote-getter with a still-drivable car in the qualifying Showdown into the big-money game. But there he was, starting shotgun on the 24-car field. By the end of the first 25-lap segment he’d driven to 13th position. By Lap 50 he was eighth.
At the end of the third segment he was seventh. And on the final pit stop with 25 laps remaining, crew chief Kenny Francis opted for fuel only, giving Kahne crucial track position that ultimately resulted in victory, making Kahne the third driver in the event’s 24-year history to win after transitioning from the qualifying race, the first to do it via the fan vote.
The crowd booed him. He called his car pathetic. His crew missed a lug nut, and he couldn’t stay off Darlington Raceway’s wall. Despite it all, Kyle Busch found Victory Lane once again. NASCAR’s least popular driver raced to his third Sprint Cup Series victory of the season Saturday night, winning a battle of attrition at the track “Too Tough to Tame.”Busch’s victory hardly thrilled the crowd, which viciously booed him in prerace introductions and hadn’t softened by the time he took the checkered flag. Already loathed by many, he enraged Dale Earnhardt Jr’s massive fan base by wrecking him as they raced for the win last week in Richmond.
Richard Childress always tells his drivers that luck occurs when preparation meets opportunity. Clint Bowyer proved the boss right on Saturday night. Bowyer was a surprise winner at Richmond International Raceway, stealing a win that first seemed destined for Denny Hamlin, then Dale Earnhardt Jr. Neither made it to Victory Lane, though, because of a wild ending that saw three drivers denied the trip Bowyer made to Victory Lane.
Hamlin, the hometown favorite, ran away with the race and led a record 381 of the 400 laps in search of his first Cup victory at Richmond. Nobody came close to challenging him until a leaking right front tire allowed Earnhardt and Kyle Busch to catch him.
The two drivers split Hamlin as they moved past him, with Earnhardt emerging as the leader with 18 laps to go. Hamlin’s tire finally failed with eight to go, and NASCAR accused him of intentionally bringing out the caution that regrouped the field and gave Busch a chance to race Earnhardt for the win.
Any place, any time, any way necessary. Kyle Busch went from a lap down to a winner at a track that has haunted him.
And when things are going your way, as they are for Busch, you also catch a break when you need it.
Busch was leading the Aaron’s 499 on the last lap, the potential sucker hole at Talladega, but a 12-car crash behind him brought out the caution and ended the race.
The green-white-checkered rule doesn’t apply if the caution comes out after the white flag.
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