Record streak within grasp of Kyle Busch

Ex-Cup champ can tie mark with his 11th straight top-10

DOVER, Del. — Morgan Shepherd pushed his No. 89 Chevrolet for a few feet through the garage with all the might a 77-year-old NASCAR driver could muster before yielding to his crew.

Pushing 80, Shepherd just might race long enough for his age to match his car number.

“Oh, yeah. That won’t be nothing,” Shepherd said.

Shepherd made his mark with a smaller, yet significant, number in 1990: 11. Shepherd posted a record 11 straight top-10 finishes to open the season in the Cup series, driving for Hall of Fame car owner Bud Moore.

Kyle Busch is nipping at Shepherd’s milestone, going 10-for-10 headed into Sunday’s race at Dover International Speedway. Busch, the 2015 NASCAR champion, already has three wins and barely extended the streak last weekend when he finished 10th at Talladega.

“It is kind of on our mind right now,” Busch said.

“Going into every week, we want to win. That is what we strive to do every time we hit the track. We thought it would come to an end last week at Talladega and it was close. We were right on the verge, but we made it through another one.”

Busch is one of NASCAR’s greatest drivers and just hit 200 career wins across all three national series. That he would run off this kind of consistency is hardly a surprise for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver that is a threat for a checkered flag each time he races.

Busch started the streak when he finished second behind teammate Denny Hamlin in the Daytona 500. He has two thirds, a sixth, an eighth and two 10th-place finishes to go with his wins during the streak.

Busch has three career wins in 28 starts at Dover and finished 35th in the track’s first race last season. He starts 22nd on Sunday.

Christopher Bell raced to his third Xfinity Series victory of the season, winning an extra $100,000 for taking the checkered flag at Dover.

Bell also won at Dover for the second straight time, though he led only 44 laps Saturday compared with 110 last fall. Bell also won this season at Atlanta and Bristol and has 11 career wins in NASCAR’s second-tier series in just 51 starts.

Bell matched Busch for most Xfinity wins this season.

Justin Allgaier was second and Tyler Reddick third. Pole-sitter Cole Custer led a race-high 156 laps but faded and finished fourth.