Triple Your Pleasure: Kyle Busch sweeps Bristol weekend
It may not be the most notable accomplishment in NASCAR history, but it was pretty cool to witness. Kyle Busch drove his self-owned truck through the field to victory on Wednesday night in Bristol and followed it up with a Friday evening bump ‘n’ run win in the Nationwide Series and Saturday’s Cup night domination to earn the first trifecta — sweeping all three series’ victories in one weekend — in NASCAR.
Busch started 19th in Saturday’s IRWIN Tools 500 and drove into the lead on lap 172. From there, he led 282 of 500 laps, including the final 86 caution free, to earn his third Cup win of the 2010 season.
The victory, his 78th across NASCAR’s three major touring series, didn’t come without some hurdles to clear. Pole sitter Jimmie Johnson led all but five of the first 199 laps, but was eliminated from contention on a lap 263 restart when hooked into the wall by Juan Pablo Montoya.
David Reutimann and Jamie McMurray ran in the top 5 for much of the second half of the race. McMurray ran Busch down over a long run to assume the point on lap 389. However, Busch beat McMurray onto pit road under a round of green flag pit stops, gaining valuable time and beating the driver of the Bass Pro Shops Chevy out.
Busch did not ascend to the lead, though, as Reutimann made better time than either during his stop, and jumped to the top spot on lap 404. He led until lap 428 when Busch was able to get by after a lengthy battle. At that point, Busch drove away from the field to win by .677 seconds.
“We had a really fast racecar,” Busch said. “Coming through the field was fun. Passing in front of those guys and working traffic the way you had to work traffic and just kind of pick and choose your way; do you go high, do you go low. You had to have a car that would really work anywhere.
“I was unsure about it going in about how good our car was going to be, but Dave [Rogers, crew chief] made some really good adjustments this morning and thought about it over the night to get us a good car for today. And so again, this Doublemint Camry was awesome, and it goes back to good teamwork.”
Reutimann, who battled food poisoning throughout the weekend, held on for second.
“We got together, but we were just racing,” Reutimann said of Busch’s race-winning pass. “It's no big deal — that's part of the deal. And if you race Kyle, you know you're going to get run into at some point. That's just kind of the way it is. So it's no big deal, we're just racing. But when he got by me, I just got loose, I made a mistake, and we were … he was getting faster and we were getting tighter, so I think we were just prolonging the inevitable. You're out there leading a race, you've got to do all you can.
“Really, he races clean, and we were just racing and got into us a little bit off of [Turn] 2 over there, and hey, it's just part of the deal. No big deal, I just made a mistake, got a little loose up off the corner, got to the gas too quick, got too aggressive and he was there to pounce on it, and the rest is history.”
McMurray, who has Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 wins to his credit this season, finished third. He moved into 13th in the point standings, 100 behind Clint Bowyer and a spot in the Chase for the Cup.
“We qualified well this weekend and we had an issue on pit road with a lug nut and had to go to the tail end [of the field],” McMurray said. “But fortunately it happened early enough in the race that we were able to recover from that.
“And you know, we had that long 130-lap run and just had a really fast car throughout that, was able to drive up to the lead. And then we put our last set of tires on. The tires just felt flat in the front and I couldn't get my car to roll through the center as quick as it had earlier in the night. It wasn't way off, but it was off just enough that I couldn't compete with the 18 there.”
Bowyer drove from 24th to finish fourth, giving him some breathing room at 12th in the race to the Chase. Kasey Kahne was fifth, Ryan Newman sixth and Montoya seventh. Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth rounded out the top 10.
Johnson took a major hit in the standings, falling to ninth by virtue of a 35th-place finish, his fifth showing of 22nd or worse in the last seven races. Kevin Harvick ran 14th and holds a 279-point lead in the standings. Jeff Gordon locked himself into the Chase with an 11th-place run.
Mark Martin slipped from 13th in the standings, 35 points out of Chase contention, to 101 points back in 14th after slumping to a 23rd-place finish.
The circuit has a rare off date next weekend before traveling to Atlanta Motor Speedway for a Labor Day weekend slot.
