Kyle Busch rolls to another dominating XFINITY win at Indy
Kyle Busch won the NASCAR XFINITY Series race Saturday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, holding off the rest of the field on older tires on two late restarts after completely dominating the rest of the race.
It was Busch's seventh win in just 11 series starts this season.
The 60-lap main event was caution-free until Erik Jones had a tire go down, spun out and brought out the first caution with just 12 laps remaining. Just six laps earlier, Jones had hit the wall while running second.
Busch remained out front following the ensuing restart, holding off Kyle Larson, Kevin Harvick and the rest of the field on older tires until the cars of Harrison Rhodes and Ray Black Jr. got into each other and brought out yet another caution with five laps to go.
That set up a green-white-checkered overtime finish, with Busch appearing to be more vulnerable than ever on his older tires. But he jumped out in front of Larson and Harvick, and ultimately fended off a final challenge from Harvick, who finished second.
“Well, the new tires for those guys was good for them, but not for so good for us having old tires," Busch said. "Obviously, but I just dug in deep and gave it everything I had. I knew I had to get really good restarts in there."
Paul Menard and Larson ended up third and fourth, respectively.
Justin Allgaier finished fifth in the race and won the Dash4Chase $100,000 bonus by being the highest-finishing XFINITY Series regular of the four who qualified to compete for it. He beat out Jones, Daniel Suarez and JR Motorsports teammate Elliott Sadler to do it, passing Sadler on the final lap to seal the deal.
"Man, I really wanted to win this race. But this was second on our list and, by God, we got it done," Allgaier told his team over the radio.
The day, though, once again belonged to Busch, who started on the pole and led all but one of the 63 laps.
Busch also is on the pole for Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, when he will attempt to become the first driver in history to sweep both the XFINITY and Sprint Cup poles and races in the same weekend.
Busch has now won the last three XFINITY races in a row as well.
"Starting up front, that means a lot here at Indy, but, man, it’s a long race," Busch said in assessing his chances for winning again on Sunday. "It’s a long 400 miles and we’ll just have to see how it goes. But our Toyota (on Saturday) was strong. I think our Toyota (on Sunday) will be even stronger."
