Kyle Busch dominates at NHMS for yet another XFINITY victory
Another NASCAR XFINITY race translated into yet another dominating victory for Kyle Busch on Saturday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Busch literally destroyed the competition in the AutoLoto 200, leading 190 of 200 laps en route to the 82nd win of his career in the series. That extended his own record for all-time XFINITY victories.
"An awesome day, boys!" Busch shouted into his team radio as he took the checkered flag.
Busch dominated the day, without a doubt.
But on a restart with 20 to go, Busch found himself in a precarious position. Despite being the leader of the race, Busch was on only two fresh tires while his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Erik Jones, had four fresh ones and was starting alongside him on the front row.
Jones, starting on the inside, got a great restart and appeared to put himself in position for a pass -- but then yet another caution came out almost immediately when the No. 01 car of Ryan Preece spun out.
So they had to do it all over again.
On the ensuing restart, Busch was able to get out front and begin to pull away. From there, Jones could not catch up and was forced to settle for second.
Brad Keselowski finished third, with Daniel Suarez and Austin Dillon rounding out the top five.
It was Busch's series-high sixth win of the season in just 10 XFINITY starts. He has now led 88 laps or more in eight of those starts, and surpassed the remarkable total of 17,000 laps led in the series for his career.
Busch said that surviving Jones' charges on the final two restarts were obviously what enabled him to win.
"He got a good restart (on the first one), got to my inside and stayed there a little bit and then the next one he kind of stayed alongside me a little bit, too," Busch said. "He raced me clean and gave me room and didn’t door slam me or anything to try to get the win.
"Our cars were pretty equal I felt like and it was just a matter of track position. I thought four tires would pay off for him, but it didn’t. That’s just Loudon. That’s just what this place is."
By finishing second, Jones at least officially clinched a spot in the inaugural Chase for the XFINITY Series championship. But he was left wanting more after finishing second for the fourth time this season -- and for the third time to Busch.
"I thought we were just as good as him, if not even a little bit better when we got up close to him," said Jones, who also has two XFINITY wins this season. "We had a lapped car right up in the groove coming off Turn 2 (after the second restart), it took all the pressure off him where he wasn't worried about making a mistake.
"I think if we could have stayed a little closer, we could have maybe forced him to make a mistake. That's how we got around him earlier in the day (when Jones led three laps). ... It feels good to be up there with him, but we definitely want to beat him straight up one of these days."
