Another Win For Busch

Kyle Busch’s once longshot bid to earn Chase for the Sprint Cup eligibility continues to become increasingly likely with each passing race.

Now, he’s nearly there, as Busch picked up 47 points to move into the 33rd position with 247.

Kyle Busch has been on fire since his return to NASCAR Sprint Cup racing after breaking his foot and leg in the season-opening Xfinity Series race in February at Daytona worldwide Speedway. He returned to competition two months ago and has started in eight points-paying events since.

Part of that vault to the title came when Stewart won the second race in the Chase for the Championship in 2011, which came at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Practice mishap: Jeff Gordon’s No. 24 Chevrolet suffered serious damage to its right-rear during Saturday’s first practice session when Gordon was backing out of his garage and was hit by Clint Bowyer, who was driving out to the track. The only thing really worth monitoring in the points now is Kyle Busch’s trek to the top-30 as anyone who has a win is more focused on the championship and getting ready for it now. So, as it gets closer, Im wishing I was racing it.”. Not only is he rivals with Busch, he might have had the best vehicle in each of the past two weeks yet went home empty handed.

That doesn’t seem like much with seven races left in the regular season.

Ryan Blaney: After missing the past two races due to qualifying being canceled by rain, Blaney and his Wood Brothers team have had one of the fastest cars on the track this weekend. Edwards led the first 19 laps before Busch pulled ahead of him to claim the lead for the first time. He was running low on fuel during the lengthy caution as the track clean-up crew worked after the auto of Alex Bowman caught fire at his exit of pit road.

Busch outran Brad Keselowski on a restart with 43 laps to go and was never seriously challenged.

“This is something I’m not sure we ever would have expected”, Busch told ESPN.

“We’ve got a pit cart over there that kind of blocks what you can see of the back of my auto backing out there”, Gordon added. “That saved us right there”. Chris Buescher was 14th and maintained his lead in the series standings. Dillon lashed out after the race and said Hamlin purposely tried to wreck him and vowed payback, though he stopped short of saying it would come in Sunday’s Sprint Cup race.

There have been 11 different winners in the last 11 Sprint Cup races at this track, a streak dating back to the fall of 2009.

Busch got back on the lead lap when he aggressively passed Harvick and Keselowski prior to the caution.

Brad Keselwoski led the most laps. I figured it was [Harvick] still, and it was and [Harvick] and [Keselowski] were really the class of the field I felt like today. “All of us are fast and were all pushing one another, but were all sharing information.”. I’m proud of my team for the effort.

Keselowski finished second, followed by Kevin Harvick, Joey Logano and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

With Busch in the field or not, JGR has three other contenders in Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth. Kenseth finished sixth in this race, Edwards started from the pole and was seventh, and Hamlin was 14th.

For NASCAR driver Kyle Busch, the road to the chase has been a bit different.