Busch finally notches victory
After all the laps Kyle Busch has led in the NASCAR Nationwide Series this season, he finally led the only one that matters.
Busch won at Texas Motor Speedway in dominating fashion Saturday, leading 126 of the 200 laps and finishing more than a second ahead of Jeff Burton at Fort Worth, Texas. With an average speed of 151.708 mph, it was fastest Nationwide race at the 1 1/2-mile high-banked track.
“I never won here, and I proved that, I don’t know where Victory Lane is,” Busch said. “I got lost getting here.”
The caution flag came out with 10 laps left after Kyle Krisiloff crashed on the backstretch.
Instead of pitting for new tires, Busch kept his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota on the track.
On the restart with seven laps to go, Busch stayed out front and stretched his gap ahead of Burton’s Chevrolet. Clint Bowyer, the series points leader, had two fresh tires and gained two spots in the closing laps to finish third in another Chevrolet.
“He was just rolling,” Burton said of Busch. “The best car won today.”
Burton was heard on the radio during the closing laps expressing regret about not pitting for new tires. But he admitted afterward that it wouldn’t have mattered.
Busch started 31st and worked through the field to lead four times, including the final 43 laps after an earlier stretch of 60 straight laps interrupted only by the last series of green-flag stops.
“When we finally ended up taking the lead, I thought in my head, this is too good to be true,” Busch said.
His skepticism was certainly warranted, since he had led almost one-third of the 1,066 laps (345) in the first six races this season without being there at the end.
It was the 12th Nationwide victory for Busch, and first at Texas, where he was the runner-up to Kevin Harvick last fall and also finished second in his first try in 2004.
Formula One
Robert Kubica of BMW Sauber edged Felipe Massa of Ferrari to take pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix at Sakhir, Bahrain.
Overall leader Lewis Hamilton of McLaren will start from third while Kimi Raikkonen had the fourth-best qualifying time in his Ferrari. McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen rounded out the top five for today’s race at the Bahrain International Circuit.
•The American Automobile Association wants FIA president Max Mosley to resign following a sex scandal.
The AAA joined a growing list of worldwide motoring federations demanding that the 67-year-old Mosley step down after a British tabloid reported last week that he participated in sex acts with five prostitutes in a scenario it said involved Nazi role-playing.