Kurt Busch got by his brother, Kyle, on the final lap in overtime to win Saturday night’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway.
Busch scored his first win of the season and gave Chip Ganassi Racing victory number one of the season as well.
“That was epic,” Busch said of the thrilling battle for the win. “I was hopeful that we would get a shot, just one more restart. We got that yellow and with my little brother, it’s the best guy in the world to go race against.”
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The younger Busch brother could only settle for second place.
“Kurt got on my door off of 2 there and got a run down the backstretch and I didn’t have enough of a room going into 3 there,” Kyle said. “He just had too much momentum coming off of 4. We just didn’t make good enough adjustments to win the race.” (Read More)
Erik Jones, Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin rounded out the top five.
Clint Bowyer, Joey Logano, Daniel Suarez, Ryan Newman and Chris Buescher completed the first 10 finishers.
Kurt Busch and Kyle Busch won the first two stages. Stage Points
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series now heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway next Sunday afternoon.
How Kurt Busch Won: An overtime restart set up the drama as the Busch brothers battled it out with Jones in the mix as well. But Kurt finally got a run on the outside of Kyle as the duo raced through the last turn on the final lap and despite getting sideways was able to hang on to score the thrilling win.
Who Had a Good Day: Kyle Busch’s average Kentucky finish is 4.7 his best of all tracks…Jones had his best Kentucky finish and has finished top-seven in all three Kentucky starts…Larson has finished top 10 in three of the last four races of 2019…Newman scored his seventh top-10 finish of 2019, he had only nine in all of 2018.
Who Had a Bad Day: Austin Dillon’s string of bad luck continued as a mechanical issue doomed him to a 35th-place finish…Jimmie Johnson spun and made contact with the wall leading him to a 30th-place finish…Bubba Wallace spun out to cause the final overtime restart…Kevin Harvick ran out of fuel in the closing laps and ended up with a 22nd-place finish.
What Else Happened: Track officials went to great lengths to create as competitive a racing surface as possible. Traction compound and the Tire Dragon were used to provide drivers with additional grip and create multiple racing grooves around the 1.5-mile track. It appeared to work especially as the sun set and cooler temperatures increased grip and drivers were able to find different lanes to use.
Quotable: “That’s how you do it there boys,” Kurt Busch taking the checkered flag.
Notables: Kurt Busch gave crew chief Matt McCall his first career Cup win. It was the 17th career series win for CGR…Every race held at Kentucky has been won by a Cup champion.
