Some of the excitement that eluded NASCAR’s Sprint All-Star Race a week earlier materialized during and after Saturday night’s Nationwide Series Carquest Auto Parts 300 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
Kyle Busch ended Joe Gibbs Racing’s streak of six-straight Nationwide victories — sort of. The JGR driver, racing the No. 32 Dollar General Toyota of Braun Racing, interrupted his primary team’s dominance by holding off Denny Hamlin in the JGR No. 20 Toyota Camry, which had won the last four Nationwide Series events with Tony Stewart, Hamlin and Busch behind the wheel.
Several late caution flags helped Busch, whose team gambled with its fuel strategy, hoping for enough caution laps to get Busch to the finish.
“We stayed out and that got us in front when it counted most, and those guys took fuel that last time,” said Busch. “We’d already come a little bit earlier and we decided to gamble and stretch it a little bit, and it ended up paying off for us.”
Busch, who is normally a lightning rod for controversy, kept the mayhem behind him as Hamlin and third-place Brad Keselowski, driving the No. 88 U.S. Navy Chevrolet for JR Motorsports, made contact during the final caution period, and frustration between the two teams spilled over onto pit lane after the race.
Keselowski bumped Hamlin from behind after the caution flew, and Hamlin retaliated by swiping the front-left quarter panel of the No. 88, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., in the JR Motorsports U.S. Navy No. 83, bumped Hamlin as well. All of the yellow-flag bumping ignited a post-race altercation between the No. 20 and No. 88 teams that NASCAR officials had to diffuse.
“My complaint was...there are situations where you can give a guy two inches to let him clear and not hang on his right-rear quarterpanel,” Hamlin said. “It’s frustrating. Guys are going to get pissed off and race you harder...I said during the race that I would do what I had to, to make the No. 88’s job harder. I would block him and let the 32 car win if I had to because of the way he raced me.
“When all he had to do was give two inches, let the guy go — he got there for a reason, and I was there many times earlier in the race.”
While Hamlin complained about Keselowski’s style, Keselowski, driving his first full season for JR Motorsports, made no apologies.
“I race one day a week; I don’t race twice a week,” he said. “I have one day a week to prove myself. I have 200 laps to prove myself. I have 200, not 400. I have to take every opportunity I can to prove myself to myself and to JR Motorsports, to the Navy and my competitors and my fans. I have to make the most of every lap.”
Almost lost in the post-race controversy was another dominant victory by Busch, who led 86 of the race’s 202 laps and easily held the No. 20 at bay over two restarts over the final 18 laps. The victory was Busch’s fourth of the season and moved him to within 67 points of series championship leader Clint Bowyer, who turned in another solid top-10 finish, bringing the No. 2 BB&T Chevrolet home in sixth.
“It was just a good clean run for us,” said Busch, who overcame a poor pit stop on the sixth caution of the race that dropped him from the lead to seventh on the restart after the car was not lifted high enough on the jack to replace the rear tire. “We got back in traffic there a couple of times. We never knew how good the car was going to be, but we were able to make some moves there on the top side and get back through traffic. We never ran into anybody and never ruffled any feathers or anything.”
Still, Busch needed a little luck to get to victory lane. Unlike last week’s all-green All-Star Race, Busch got plenty of help from the flagstand. The race was dotted with a dozen caution flags for 44 laps, including a spin that took out early leader Sam Hornish, Jr., and a late crash that eliminated contenders Jason Leffler and Steven Wallace.
Earnhardt finished fourth behind his own car and polesitter Brian Vickers finished fifth. Bowyer, Greg Biffle, Jeff Burton, David Ragan and Jimmie Johnson rounded out the top 10.
If not for the finish under caution due to Mike Wallace’s spin on lap 202, Hamlin may have been able to mount a challenge on Busch over the final lap.
“We needed to go green,” said Hamlin. “We had a pretty good race going there at the end between the three of us (Busch, Hamlin and Keselowski) with a few laps to go, but we didn’t need that caution at the end.”