Kyle Busch escapes tire issues, wins Auto Club 400 in overtime
Mar. 23, 2014
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
FONTANA,
Calif.— In a race that saw tire problems turn the contest upside-down,
Kyle Busch won Sunday’s Auto Club 400 in a green-white-checkered-flag
finish that took the fifth
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event of the year six laps past its scheduled
distance.
The
first driver on four fresh tires for a restart on Lap 205 at Auto Club
Speedway, Busch passed Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Kurt Busch and Tony
Stewart on the next-to-last
lap, bringing rookie Kyle Larson with him.
Able to
keep Larson behind him on the final lap, Busch crossed the finish line
.214 seconds ahead of the 21-year-old, who had won the NASCAR Nationwide
Series race at the two-mile
track one day earlier.
The
victory was Busch’s second straight and third overall at Fontana, his
first of the season and the 29th of his career. Kurt Busch, who like
Stewart took right-side tires
only on the final pit stop on Lap 200, ran third, followed by
polesitter Matt Kenseth and Stewart.
Jamie McMurray, Brian Vickers, AJ Allmendinger, Paul Menard and Carl Edwards completed the top 10.
“I knew
four tires was going to win the race, so I’m glad (crew chief) Dave
(Rogers) called that,” Busch said in Victory Lane. “There was some great
racing up front between
Tony and Kurt there. It was really interesting to watch that.
“I went
into Turn 1 thinking I’m going to run the middle and then Tony started
sliding off the bottom and I’m like, ‘Nope, not having it.’ I had to get
some brake and cut my
car to the left and drove underneath him and got him cleared off Turn
2, and I was able to keep Kyle Larson behind me.”
Though he ran second, Larson nevertheless earned Busch’s admiration in the process.
“Man,
what a shoe that boy is,” Busch said. “If he would have gotten alongside
of me, it would have been a whale of a race. I drove off into Turn 3,
but I heard ‘Car inside’
on my left.
“If he drove it in further than I did, Jesus must have told him to stop… What an awesome race this track produced!”
Larson was surprised he was able to reach second place after restarting ninth in the bottom lane for the green-white-checker.
“I was
thinking I was going to line up eighth,” Larson said, “but then the 40
(Landon Cassill) stayed out, and I had to line up on the bottom, and I
was disappointed because
the bottom had been getting jammed up once we got to Turn 1. I was
surprised--I just watched it on TV and it was pretty wild--we were four
wide there into (Turn) 1.
“Came
out in fourth there, I think, and then got to second off Turn 2 the next
lap and thought I might have a shot at Kyle, depending on where he'd go
into Turn 3. But he was
good enough to keep it on the bottom and stay ahead of me. But we'll
take second. Long race and definitely didn't expect to run second, so
I'll take it and head back to North Carolina with a smile on my face.”
Until
the final five laps, the race had all the makings of a routine victory
by Jimmie Johnson, who had a commanding lead over Hendrick Motorsports
teammate Jeff Gordon as
the event approached the regulation distance of 400 miles.
But Johnson, who led 104 laps, blew a left front tire and drove his car to pit road, handing Gordon the lead. No caution.
Brad
Keselowski suffered his third left rear tire failure a lap later but
stayed out of harm’s way. No caution. The same fate befell Marcos
Ambrose on the same lap. No caution.
Finally,
when Clint Bowyer’s Toyota spun on lap 198, thanks to a flat left rear
tire, NASCAR called the caution that set up the two-lap dash to the
finish.
The
tire issues that surfaced during Saturday’s practice
sessions—particularly in the left rear position—plagued drivers
throughout the race, not just at the finish. Kevin
Harvick caused the first caution on Lap 18 when his left rear tire
blew.
Harvick
charged through the field and was running third on Lap 138 when another
blown left rear forced him to pit road. With tire debris strewn across
the backstretch, NASCAR
called a caution on Lap 141, with Johnson in the lead.
Keselowski,
who suffered two flat left rears during Saturday’s practice, had two
more during the race but both yellow flags rescued him in both cases.
Twice Keselowski brought
the No. 2 Ford to pit road under caution with the tire soft, escaping a
failure at speed that could have damaged the car.
But the third failure, in the closing laps, dropped the 2012 series champion to 26th at the finish.
The
race winner, though, had no tire problems and suggested that other teams
might have been overly aggressive in lowering tire pressures.
Notes:
Gordon was shuffled back on the final restart and finished 13th…
Johnson came home 24th,
the last driver on the lead lap… Menard, who skipped Friday’s
qualifying to be with his wife after the birth of their daughter, posted
his ninth-place finish after starting from the rear of the field
because of the driver change. Matt Crafton had qualified
the car… Sam Hornish Jr. ran 17th in Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota,
after Hamlin left the track for a local hospital before the race to
treat a sinus infection that impaired his vision. Hornish had been at
the track on standby for Matt Kenseth, whose wife Katie
is expecting the couple’s third daughter.
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