Busch Capitalizes on Caution for Richmond Win at LinesMaker

Busch Capitalizes on Caution for Richmond Win

RICHMOND, Va. (NASCAR/Newsfeed) — Pulling away from Dale Earn­hardt Jr. after a restart with eight laps left in Sat­ur­day night’s Cap­i­tal City 400 at Rich­mond Inter­na­tional Race­way, Kyle Busch streaked to his fourth con­sec­u­tive vic­tory in the spring race at the .75-mile track.

The win was Busch’s first of the sea­son and the 24th of his career, tying him with his brother, 2004 Sprint Cup cham­pion Kurt Busch, for 26th all-time.

Tony Stew­art, the race leader before the fifth and final cau­tion for debris in Turn 2, lost ground on the restart and fin­ished third. Denny Ham­lin ran fourth, fol­lowed by Kasey Kahne.

The race turned on the last cau­tion, which Stew­art said was called because of a plas­tic water bot­tle in Turn 2. Stew­art was strong on long runs but unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally slow off the mark on restarts, and Busch took full advantage.

The first step was beat­ing Stew­art off pit road dur­ing the final four-tire stop on Lap 388 of 400 and gain­ing con­trol of the restart.

“I don’t know where that last cau­tion came from, but it was our sav­ing grace,” Busch said in Vic­tory Lane. “It was a gift. We came down pit road and [crew chief] Dave Rogers and the guys went to work and gave us a great pit stop, got me out front.

“[That] gave me the lead so I could restart the race how I wanted to. That was the win right there.”

As he approached the fin­ish line, Busch radioed to his crew: “What up, boys — we’re back!”

It was a stel­lar week­end for the race win­ner, who won Fri­day night’s Nation­wide Series event as a car owner, with brother Kurt behind the wheel of the Kyle Busch Motor­sports Toyota.

Earn­hardt, who took over sec­ond in the stand­ings — five points behind series leader and 18th-place fin­isher Greg Bif­fle — expe­ri­enced brake prob­lems for much of the race, but used the late restart to improve his posi­tion after Stew­art fell back.

“We had some brake prob­lems all race long,” Earn­hardt explained. “I had a great restart, and I ran really great for one lap, and the pedal went back to the floor. I just had to pump it up all the way down the straight­away and I didn’t have any front brakes get­ting into the cor­ner, so I couldn’t get in real hard.

“It would just get loose lock­ing the rears up. So even with the brakes work­ing, I think the No. 18 [Busch] was just a lit­tle bit bet­ter than us all night.”

Slow pit stops cost Stew­art track posi­tion on more than one occa­sion, but it was the final cau­tion that proved the undo­ing of the defend­ing Cup cham­pion, who has three Rich­mond vic­to­ries but none since 2002.

“When the cau­tion is for a plas­tic bot­tle on the back­stretch, it’s hard to feel good about los­ing that one,” said Stew­art, who led Busch by more than a sec­ond when the yel­low flag waved. “And we gave it away on pit road. So we did every­thing we could to throw it away; it got taken away from us.

“That’s the best car I’ve had at Rich­mond in a long time. So I’m really proud of that and [crew chief] Steve Adding­ton, and I’m proud of our guys. But we’ve got some work to do on pit stops right now. I don’t know what their mal­func­tion was but I’m pretty ticked off about it tonight.”

A cau­tion for Jeff Burton’s crash into the Turn 3 wall on Lap 311 inter­rupted a cycle of green-flag pit stops and scram­bled the run­ning order.

Jim­mie John­son, who came to pit road when the cau­tion flew, was penal­ized for a tire vio­la­tion on his pit stop — after one of his crew­men rolled a tire unat­tended toward the pit wall — and had to restart on Lap 319 from the tail end of the field.

That same restart proved dis­as­trous for Edwards, who was black-flagged for jump­ing the start after he put the power down, in NASCAR’s judg­ment, before reach­ing the dou­ble red restart lines on the out­side wall.

Forced to serve a pass-through penalty, Edwards dropped to 15th, 17 sec­onds behind Stew­art. On lap 372, Stew­art put Edwards a lap down and pulled away from Busch in sec­ond place to a lead of nearly two seconds.

John­son ral­lied to fin­ish sixth, but Edwards, who led a race-high 210 laps, had to set­tle for 10th, after get­ting back on the lead lap as the free-pass car under the last caution.

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NASCAR rac­ing news see: Busch cap­i­tal­izes on cau­tion for Rich­mond win.

Related Posts:

• Kyle Busch Scores Four-in-a-Row as Cau­tions Are Key in Richmond
• Kyle Busch Could Use Rich­mond Boost
• Second-Round Pick Kelly Hits at Busch Stadium
• John­son Focuses on Pos­i­tives in Face of Near-Miss at Richmond
• Keselowski Gets Push From Busch to Win Talladega

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