Kyle Busch wins Busch at Phoenix
Kyle Busch took his fourth Busch Series victory of the season after holding off Matt Kenseth in a green-white-chequer final in the Arizona Travel 200 at Phoenix International Raceway
Busch was the class of the field all day, leading the most laps during the afternoon en route to his second victory of the weekend. On Friday Busch won the Craftsman Truck Series race and now he looks to make history and take a full sweep out of the weekend at Phoenix.
"When you have a car that good, you can make whatever happen, whatever possible," said Busch. "For the past couple of weeks we've kind of struggled to have that good of a car and we've had bad pitstops but today we just have to thank everybody."
"Kenseth and I would run faster on the top than what we were on the bottom and it's kind of weird that the car didn't move that much. We'll see what [the track] is like tomorrow, but the Cup cars tend to get tighter the more you move up. So, I don't think that's going to be the way to go for tomorrow."
Kenseth was a threat for Busch in the final part of the race but the final two-lap sprint didn't help his cause. The Roush Fenway driver had the handicap of a fading power steering on his car, which probably made the race a bit tougher physically for him, although he says the real problem was getting the right feel for what the car was doing.
"Kyle did a great job and put his car where it needed to be so that I couldn't get by him," Kenseth said. "Physically you could turn [the car] but it was just hard to feel the front tyres, hard to feel what the car was doing exactly. That was a little bit of a hindrance. It wasn't that hard physically to drive."
Pole-sitter Clint Bowyer finished the race third while Scott Wimmer was fourth in the No. 29 RCR entry, which all but clinched the owner's title. The entry has also been driven by Jeff Burton in 18 races this year and just by taking the start in the season finale at Homestead they will win the championship.
Kevin Harvick finished the race battling with Wimmer but eventually crossed the line fifth, ahead of Kasey Kahne, Series' champion Carl Edwards, Jason Leffler, Jamie McMurray and Phoenix local JJ Yeley who rounded up the top-ten.
The race was pretty eventful with 14 caution periods lasting for 46 of the 203 laps, including two red flag interruptions for pile-ups along the front stretch.
One of them involved Dario Franchitti, who looked set for a decent finish on his third Busch Series race, until he tapped the rear of David Gilliland with three laps to go, sending him into a spin exiting turn four, and causing a wreck that also caught Stanton Barrett and David Ragan.
Franchitti and Gilliland crashed into the inside wall of the front stretch, while Barrett was hard into the outside barrier, causing the race to be red flagged for nearly 12 minutes to allow officials to clean the track for the green-white-chequer finish.
The Scot was running 24th when the incident happened, and he had already recovered from a brush with the wall, a spin and being a lap down shortly before that. He was classified 29th although after the crash he didn't return to the track to finish the race.
His former IRL IndyCar Series rival Sam Hornish Jr didn't have a good race either and was involved in an incident very early into the race with Todd Souza, which ended both of their afternoons on the spot.
The Busch Series season finale at Homestead next weekend will be a mere formality as both the drivers' and owners' titles are not in contest anymore.
Pos Driver Make Laps 1. Kyle Busch Chevrolet 203 2. Matt Kenseth Ford 203 3. Clint Bowyer Chevrolet 203 4. Scott Wimmer Chevrolet 203 5. Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 203 6. Kasey Kahne Dodge 203 7. Carl Edwards Ford 203 8. Jason Leffler Toyota 203 9. Jamie McMurray Ford 203 10. Ron Hornaday Chevrolet 203 11. J.J. Yeley Chevrolet 203 12. David Reutimann Toyota 203 13. A.J. Allmendinger Dodge 203 14. Michael McDowell Toyota 203 15. Marcos Ambrose Ford 203 16. Brad Coleman Chevrolet 203 17. Mike Wallace Chevrolet 203 18. Tony Raines Chevrolet 203 19. Stephen Leicht Ford 203 20. Robby Gordon Ford 203 21. Brad Keselowski Chevrolet 203 22. Kelly Bires Ford 203 23. David Ragan Ford 203 24. Bobby Hamilton Jr Ford 203 25. Kyle Krisiloff Ford 202 26. John Graham Ford 201 27. Brian Vickers Toyota 199 28. Denny Hamlin Chevrolet 199 29. Dario Franchitti Dodge 198 30. Richard Johns Ford 197 31. Stanton Barrett Chevrolet 197 32. Mike Bliss Dodge 182 33. Blake Bjorklund Chevrolet 180 34. Landon Cassill Chevrolet 170 35. Jason Keller Chevrolet 139 36. Greg Biffle Ford 138 37. Steve Wallace Dodge 138 38. Jeremy Clements Chevrolet 35 39. Sam Hornish Jr Dodge 24 40. Todd Souza Chevrolet 22 41. Kertus Davis Chevrolet 19 42. Frank Kreyer Chevrolet 9 43. D.J. Kennington Dodge 8
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