Busch wins Sprint Cup race at Richmond
Kyle Busch capped a perfect weekend Saturday night by winning the spring race at Richmond (Va.) for the fourth consecutive year.
The victory snaps a 22-race winless streak for Busch, and came a day after he went to Victory Lane for the first time as a Nationwide Series team owner. Kurt Busch drove his younger brother’s car to its first victory Friday.
The win also broke a tie between Busch and Richard Petty (1971-73) in consecutive wins in the Richmond spring race.
“Is that some sort of record? I’m hoping it is,” Busch said. “It means so much that we’re able to come to this place every time and know that we can have a decent car.”
As he celebrated his first Sprint Cup Series win of the season, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards both believed the win was taken from them.
Stewart was upset because a caution for debris – he claimed it was for a bottle of soda or water that wasn’t an on-track hindrance – erased his lead with 13 laps remaining. He led the leaders down pit road for a final stop, and Busch beat him back onto the track.
Busch also easily pulled away from Stewart on the restart with nine laps to go, and Stewart was also passed by Dale Earnhardt Jr. to fade to third.
“When the caution is for a plastic bottle on the backstretch, it’s hard to feel good losing that one,” Stewart said. “And we gave it away on pit road. So, we did everything we could to throw it away, got taken away from us.”
Edwards thought the same thing after NASCAR penalized him for jumping the restart with 81 laps remaining.
It capped a confusing sequence in what had been a calm, quiet race through the first 300 laps. But a caution after Jeff Burton hit the wall scrambled everything, and only 15 cars were shown on the lead lap when racing resumed. Edwards lined up next to Stewart for the restart, and his spotter told the driver that he was the leader. But NASCAR said Stewart was the leader, and when Edwards sailed past him on the restart, NASCAR threw the black flag.
IndyCar
Two-time race winner Will Power edged defending IndyCar Series champion Dario Franchitti to win the pole position for today’s Sao Paulo 300.
Power had a lap of 1 minute, 21.4045 seconds on the 2.5-mile, 11-turn Anhembi circuit on the streets of South America’s biggest city, less than half a second ahead of Franchitti, whose Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon will start third.
James Hinchcliffe, Ryan-Hunter Reay and Justin Wilson rounded the fastest six in qualifying on Saturday.
• IndyCar fined Panther Racing owner John Barnes and placed him on probation until the end of the year for posting a critical comment on Twitter.
IndyCar said that Barnes was fined $25,000 and put on probation until Dec. 31 for using “improper or disparaging language in reference to IndyCar.”
Barnes can appeal the penalties. He admitted in a statement he “should have chosen a more private forum to voice my opinions.”
The Panther owner tweeted on Thursday: “Today is the day to resolve TURBOGATE! I hope (at)indcar gets their act together. It has been embarrassing.”
He was referring to a hearing to decide whether Honda would be allowed to make changes to its turbochargers, which eventually happened.