GIVE HIM SIX
Kyle Busch adds another Cup Series win to season
LONG POND, Pa. — Kyle Busch and his Joe Gibbs Racing team were in sync everywhere Sunday at Pocono Raceway except victory lane. When it was time to snap photos of the winning driver and crew, some members flashed one finger, while others held up six.
Yes, that’s one for the win at the Pennsylvania tri-oval and six for the total this season.
Busch then heard his name shouted from the top of the Richard Petty 200 Victory Circle. He craned his neck toward the section where the words were flanked by two images of Petty in his famous feathered Stetson hat and dark glasses. He still has a long chase toward Petty on the Cup Series wins list, but it hasn’t kept the 33-year-old star from thinking about how far he can get.
“The top!” Busch said. “Pretty simple.”
Busch had no one to bump him out of the lead this week and stormed from the bottom half of the field to another win.
While champagne was sprayed on the podium, Gibbs was a safe distance from the party, a Super Bowl ring glistening on the finger the team owner and former NFL coach plugged into an ear to muffle outside noise as he talked on the phone.
“Crazy, man. He’s on a tear right now,” Gibbs said.
The milestones keep piling up for Busch, who matched Kevin Harvick for most Cup Series wins this season and tied three-time series champ Tony Stewart for 13th on the career list with 49.
“You keep reaching higher up the ladder, and you keep reaching more milestone drivers,” Busch said. “Tony Stewart is one of the all-time best and one of the drivers that I was a fan of growing up. It’s awesome to be able to tie him. There’s many more. We want to keep going.”
Gibbs fielded cars for both Busch and Stewart, who retired after the 2016 season, and said both drivers were born to race.
“Very talented, driven, they want to go to the front,” Gibbs said. “Both of them were real talented, that’s for sure.”
Busch, who won eight times in 2008, made it look easy this past weekend at Pocono, where he also won Saturday’s Camping World Truck Series race to match all-time series leader Ron Hornaday Jr.’s 51 victories. On Sunday, Busch pushed his wins total in NASCAR’s top three series to 192 — he has 92 wins in the Xfinity Series — moving within eight of Petty’s total, though the King’s victories all came on the top circuit.
“How many can you get? I don’t know. I’d like to think everything’s achievable,” said Busch, who hasn’t gone more than three Cup Series races without winning since April.
Busch had never won at Pocono until July 2017. He has won 10 Cup Series races and led more than 2,000 laps since then.
He was set to start second Sunday, but his No. 18 Toyota was one of 13 cars dumped to the back of the pack for flunking post-qualifying inspection. The penalized cars included Harvick, who used a bump-and-run maneuver with seven laps left in the previous race to knock Busch out of contention in New Hampshire.
Much like the qualifying penalty, though, the week before was a minor afterthought.
Harvick’s pole-qualifying run also was tossed out, but he led 30 laps and finished fourth.
The race was red flagged with six laps left in the wake of a violent wreck after Darrell Wallace Jr. lost the brakes in his No. 43 Chevrolet and the car shot across the grass and slammed into the wall. There were several tense seconds during a wait for Wallace to put down his window net. Once out, he sat on the track and slumped against the car before he was taken to the track medical center.
When the race resumed, Busch zipped away, and he surged ahead again on the final restart in overtime to add to the win total for NASCAR’s Big Three of 2018: Busch, Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. have won 16 of the 21 Cup Series races this year.
“What’s crazy is how this year keeps going,” Busch said. “Harvick gets one, we get one, Truex gets one. We’re all back and forth.”
Busch held off a pair of young drivers, with each aiming for his first Cup Series win. Daniel Suarez, the first Mexican driver to start on the pole for a Cup Series race, finished second. Alex Bowman was third.
There are just five events left before the 16-driver playoff field is set, and only seven drivers have won races this season, with a victory all but securing a spot.