Kyle Busch Adds To XFINITY Win Pile; Title Battle Tightens

Motor Racing Network – “The Voice of NASCAR” – will have live coverage of the Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 from Phoenix global Raceway on Sunday, beginning at 1:30 p.m. (ET) – with live streaming at MRN.com and on the MRN App. If he can pull off the same sort of result in Sunday’s Sprint Cup race then Busch will be heading to Homestead-Miami Speedway having booked his place in the final line-up of four drivers competing for the championship in the season finale.

I say good luck with that, Jay, because you are going to need all of your people skills to deal with the group of team owners that now populate IndyCar. Keselowski and the #2 team have conservatively worked their way through the Chase until they were forced to charge to survive.

Kevin Harvick, victor of four consecutive races at Phoenix and five of the last six, qualified eighth. It’s “win or go home” for Brad Keselowski this week and when faced with similar circumstances in the past he has shown he can get the job done and he’s one to watch for on Sunday. He is the only Sprint Cup driver to win four consecutive races at Phoenix.

Shy of a catastrophic race this weekend in Arizona, based on the Chase Grid, Busch looks to be there as well. The pressure is on everyone and that includes Harvick. But he wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of a storybook ending: Keselowski staved off elimination a year ago by winning at Talladega. Expect no different this weekend as the current series champion will do whatever it takes to make the finals at Homestead. As previously noted here, it seems unfair when Denny Hamlin wins the Chase opener, is second in points entering the sixth race, has a bad finish (37th) and doesn’t advance to the Eliminator Round.

“He has a keen sense to find more speed than anybody else”, is how teammate Kurt Busch sums up Harvick’s uncanny feel for the flat Phoenix mile. “The only thing I’ve thought about this week was winning this race”.

Martin Truex Jr. just continues to hang in there and is now in the fourth and final spot to continue to the Championship round. The pit stops saw Keselowski edge Busch for the front for the restart, but it made little difference: once the green flag came out, Busch simply blasted past him and resumed the lead – where he would stay for the remaining 80 uninterrupted green flag laps until the chequered flag. If he can do that, he should be in. In the spring race Truex finished seventh after running in the top five in the middle portion of the race. “I just want to sit on the pole, win races, lead laps”.

Joe Gibbs Racing may not have been able to achieve its goal of putting all four of its drivers in the Championship Round of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, but it has a good chance at getting two in.

Logano has not had much success at Phoenix, with just two top-five finishes and no trips to Victory Lane. Kyle Busch, who was injured early in the season, returned to dominate and make The Chase, then struggled early on, now looks like the driver to beat. His father won at Phoenix in 2005 en route to a fourth-place finish in the series.

Kevin Harvick: The obvious favorite, given is recent domination and Phoenix and seven career victories.

First and foremost (and not surprisingly), he likes the place.