Auto racing | NASCAR: Kyle Busch stays on a roll

Could the NASCAR driver imagine, days after a horrific crash, that he would become a Sprint Cup title contender this season?

“Yeah, right”, he said. “You’re insane”. At this pace, it will not take long for Busch to earn his Chase berth.

American racer Kyle Busch claimed his third win for the season during Sunday’s race at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

“This is a mad sport, and you never know how it’s going to turn out, but coming to pit road, I thought I had a tire going down and there was oil on the track”, Busch said.

To move inside the top-30 in the standings, a requirement NASCAR said he must fulfill, what Busch needed to do was tone down his aggressiveness and emphasize racing for points than victories.

A mid-summer of success may have once signaled a championship run in the Sprint Cup series, but the elimination-style format of the new Chase makes lightning – like the kind crackling around the speedway Sunday – hard to bottle. He’s still outside the top 30 in points, which is the second major qualifier to race for the title in the final 10 races of the season.

The odds in Kyle Busch’s favor made another dramatic surge on Sunday afternoon at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Cole Whitt is 31st and Brett Moffitt 32nd, easy pickings for Busch.

“I’m not sure we’ve unleashed the beast at all”, Busch said.

Jimmie Johnson won three of these eight races – Texas, Kansas and Dover – but a 35th-place finish at Martinsville and a 40th at Charlotte dropped his average finish at Chase tracks to 14.1.

Busch said Friday he still is bothered by the leg injuries. “Every week is keeps getting better and better”.

Stucker also said Goodyear will stick with the tires selected following a tire test in April at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for next weekend’s race at the Brickyard. That’s why I say, I felt like I took a little bit of a chance there today, you know, with the move down the front stretch. Kenseth finished sixth, Edwards started from the pole and was seventh, and Hamlin 14th. “It’s not the starting spot we wanted, but I think our race vehicle will be pretty good”. I knew that Brad was going to try to box me in behind him, not let me through, make me wait for another set of two corners.

And it is why non winners inside the top 30 such as Jeff Gordon and Jamie McMurray were on the gas hoping to land one of the 16 Chase spots with a win. He has seven more races to accumulate enough points to be in the top thirty in the points standings, one of the qualifications for making the Chase.

But Stevens believed Busch’s experience driving in all three of NASCAR’s national touring series – Sprint Cup, Xfinity Series, and Truck Series – served him well in his comeback.

Busch raced himself back onto the lead lap at New Hampshire with 49 laps remaining when he diced his auto between leader Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski just before a caution for fluids in Turns 3 and 4. I’m proud of the team for the effort, It feels good to have fast cars. Keselowski was the leader at halfway and led the most laps but just wasn’t able to close the gap.

Busch was joined by son Brexton, born in late May, in victory lane wearing a No. 18 outfit. Instead, Busch has shown a deftness for choosing his spots when to be assertive. He is also the 12th different victor in the last 12 races at NHMS.

On a day with temperatures soaring into the 90s, Matt DiBendendetto and Michael Annett were treated after the race at the NASCAR care center.