Bad news, good news for Busch
Truck win follows Sprint Cup crash
Kyle Busch won a race but lost a car Saturday at Michigan International Speedway.
Busch passed Ryan Blaney with four laps remaining and won the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Careers for Veterans 200— his second in two starts this season and 44th overall.
Hours earlier, though, a slide through the grass cost Busch the car he was scheduled to drive Sunday in the Sprint Cup main event at the 2-mile track in Brooklyn. He returned in a backup car but will have to start from the back in the 400-mile race, exactly the sort of scenario he needs to avoid.
Although Busch has won four times, he’s only 30th in points because he missed 11 races after breaking his right leg and left foot in February. He needs to be in the top 30 at the end of the regular season to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship shootout.
“If top 20 is it, then that’s it,” Busch said. “Michigan is not a place that I had circled on the list to go win at, so let’s just make it through (Sunday) and carry on.”
In the truck race, Blaney took the lead with six laps remaining after a restart but figured his advantage would be short-lived. Blaney finished 0.157 of a second behind.
“He can lay back to (thirdplace Erik Jones) and just get a big run and get by you,” Blaney said. “There’s nothing as a leader you can do about it.”
Xfinity Series: Regan Smith bumped his way past Alex Tagliani in the Carousel a turn from the finish to win the Nationwide Children’s Hospital at the MidOhio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio.
“I hate to do it in the last corner, but it’s been too long, a long time; I wasn’t going to pass the opportunity up,” said Smith, who ended a 52race drought.
“I’ve been wrecked so many times on these road courses, I had to do what I had to do right there. I didn’t spin him, just got the spot.”
Last week, Smith nearly got into a fight on pit road with Austin Dillon, angry that Dillon had spun him off course in Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Ty Dillon was third, followed by 2014 winner Chris Buescher and Chase Elliott.
After racing on the short track in Bristol, Tenn., next weekend, the series will back on a road course for the third time this month Aug. 28-29 at Road America in Elkhart Lake.