DOUBLING UP
Busch finishes sweep with win in Brickyard; Gordon 13th in comeback
INDIANAPOLIS — Kyle Busch won the Brickyard 400 on Sunday to make it a clean sweep at Indianapolis. Busch led a record 149 of 170 laps and beat teammate Matt Kenseth to the finish line in the second overtime by 2.126 seconds to win his second straight Brickyard 400. Coupled with his Xfinity Series success Saturday, Busch became the first NASCAR driver to win both poles and both races on the same weekend.
“I’ve never had a dominant car like this,” Busch said after winning for the fourth time this season. “This is obviously a special day and a special car.”
Tony Stewart finished 11th in his final race at Indianapolis, while Jeff Gordon was 13th in his comeback race. Gordon came out of retirement to replace Dale Earnhardt Jr., who has battled concussion-like symptoms and has not been cleared by doctors to drive.
Afterward the two drivers, who grew up in Indiana, drove side-by-side around the 2.5-mile oval one last time.
“It’s probably the last time we’ll be competing here, and I couldn’t think of a better guy to share that moment with,” Stewart said.
“Thank you to Tony Stewart,” Gordon said. “It meant a lot to me, that he invited me to come take that last lap with him.”
But nobody was better than Busch this weekend.
One year after winning both Indy races, he joined third-place finisher Jimmie Johnson as the only backto-back winners of the Brickyard. Johnson won in 2008 and 2009.
Busch surrendered the lead for 14 laps after his first pit stop, regained it when race leader Brad Keselowski pitted, then gave it up again for only five laps when he made his second pit stop.
Everyone else spent their day chasing Busch.
The No. 18 car was so strong that Roger Penske’s drivers started with a strategy of trying to stretch their runs long enough to make one fewer pit stop. It didn’t work. Logano finished seventh and Keselowski wound up 17th.
The only real challenge for Busch came with a series of late crashes that delayed his fourth trip to victory lane this season.
The crashes began when Carl Edwards’ car wiggled in the first turn on a restart with seven laps to go. His car slid up the track, hitting Keselowski and wound up involving Ryan Blaney, Ryan Newman and Danica Patrick, too. Though nobody was seriously hurt, the wreck brought out a red flag for almost eight minutes.
On the ensuing restart, with three to go, Busch again pulled away only to have a collision between Trevor Bayne and Clint Bowyer behind him to send the race into first overtime.
It happened again when Jamie McMurray slid through the first turn and into the wall on the next restart, but Busch pulled away one more time for a historic win in a race that actually went 425 miles.
“I certainly didn’t want one, let alone five of them of however many there were,” Busch said. “We just wanted the race to go green till the end. We had a really good long-run car till the end, so I felt like we’d be able to hold off all those guys behind us and then we had all those restarts.”