Credit Getty Images for Nascar
Kyle Busch is now the only driver in history to win all 3 racing events in a weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway. Busch battled his way from a 19th place starting position to win the Irwin Tools Night Race at Bristol.
“I love Bristol,” Busch said. “I love winning and it’s pretty awesome to sweep the week. I’ve been trying to do this all of my career. I just can’t Thank these guys [his team] enough.”
David Reutimann came in second, followed my Jamie McMurray, Clint Bowyer and Kasey Kahne.
Brad Keselowski riled up the crowd during driver introductions by announcing to the crowd “Kyle Busch is an ass!” As funny as it was, I think this only gave Busch the fuel and fire to go ahead and sweep the week.
Early in the race, Busch was going to have to beat either Jimmie Johnson or David Reutimann to win the race. On a restart on lap 198, Johnson, Busch and Reutimann made it three wide with Busch winning the battle for first.
Another green flag restart on lap 262 killed Johnson’s hope of winning. He and the 42 of Juan Montoya touched sending Johnson spinning resulting in a pretty hard smack into the wall. It looked liked Johnson moved up on Montoya, who was on the outside next to the wall with cars dead on his bumper. JPM didn’t really have any where to go and couldn’t let off or he would have been rammed in the rear.
“It was a restart so everybody is out there running hard,” Johnson said. “I think I left [Montoya] enough room on the outside lane there. And we were on the straightaway there for a little bit and all the sudden, I got hooked with force. It wasn’t like we bumped and banged and I squeezed him. But we were on the straightaway and everything was fine, and then around I went. So I don’t think it was something intentional and I don’t think he was trying to dump me.”
Juan Montoya tweeted that he felt really bad about the incident but was satisfied with his 7th place finish.
The final restart of the night on lap 414 had Busch and Reutimann battling door to door for the lead, along with some minor bumping and grinding. Busch was able to take over the lead on lap 429 and never looked back. From that point on, the race was pretty uneventful.
The surprises of the night were Jamie McMurray and David Reutimann. Jamie McMurray seemed to come out of no where at the end and Reutimann battled food poisoning over the weekend, but it didn’t seem to affect his run today.
“This team did just great”, Reutimann said, “especially after having to work with 2 different drivers [Aric Almirola filled in during practice]. My team gave me what I needed today, but the car was just not rotating in the center at the end and we just couldn’t get it back to how it was in the beginning of the race”
Jamie McMurray said after the race, “The last set of tires were not working that good. At the beginning of the race I thought we were the car to beat, but in the end, we just weren’t fast enough”
As a term of endearment, Clint Bowyer said of Kyle Busch, “Love him or hate him, the Turd did pretty good!”
Kasey Kahne had to overcome a speeding penalty and a flat tire. “Yea, I sped all the way around pit road, so we had to adjust our pit road speed there. Kenny Frances and Keith were able to find a set up for me that worked really well”
The tire that Goodyear brought here really seemed to cause havoc with the NASCAR crew chiefs and drivers. It was not the same tire that Denny Hamlin came here with for a tire test, so I am not sure why they brought the one they did. Everyone seemed to complain nicely about the them, but it was obvious no one was happy with it at all.
The driver I picked to win, Kevin Harvick, was really a no show today. Quite surprising to me that his car was that off today but he was able to pull out a 14th place finish.
Dale Earnhardt Jr, who always really does run pretty well here, was able to run in the top ten most of the day. He was great on short runs, but when the long runs came, he started falling back. He finished 13th today.
For the official results of the race, you can go here.
