As Busch Crashes After Dominant Performance

HAMPTON, Ga. — Matt Kenseth was able to shake Kevin Harvick during a green-white-checkered-flag finish to win Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series Nicorette 300 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Kenseth’s Ford finished 0.159 second ahead of Harvick’s Chevrolet. Jeff Burton’s Chevrolet was third, followed by Carl Edwards’s Ford and Bobby Labonte’s Chevrolet.
Kenseth said he wouldn’t have won if Kyle Busch hadn’t had a problem late in the race.
“That opened the door for everybody because he had everybody covered before that,” Kenseth said after scoring his 24th career Nationwide Series victory.
Harvick’s runner-up finish allowed him to take over the points lead but he was more concerned after a slow pit stop late in the race affected his chances at battling for the win.
“I’m disappointed we gave it away on pit road at the end,” Harvick said. “When you have an opportunity to capitalize, you have to pounce. I think we were better than the 17 (Kenseth), but after the tires came in we were pretty good. I at least want to have the chance to win. We had a good car today. We weren’t quite as good as the 20 (Busch). We didn’t have enough time to get back up through there. I’m proud of everything they’ve done but disappointed we didn’t capitalize on them. We didn’t need any cautions at the end. I needed a few laps to get to where I needed to be to be able to pass him back.
“Our cars are more competitive but we have to do all the small things right. I’m really glad to be at the point where we are at to be a championship contending team. You have to make things happen and that part comes with the territory. It’s just hard to swallow at this point.”
Busch was leading the race when a right-front tire blew on his Toyota for the second week in a row.
“We had the dominant car and Toyota should be very proud. I’m sorry for the fact we blew the right-front tire,” Busch said.
With 11 laps to go, Kenseth challenged Burton for the lead. One lap later, he made the pass and began to pull away before a big crash involving Bryan Clausen, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Eric McClure on the backstretch with six laps to go.
NASCAR waved the red flag to clean up debris from the crash.
Kenseth brought the field to the green flag with three laps to go ahead of Harvick and Burton as David Ragan’s car hit the wall, leaving more debris on the track and setting up the finish.
“It played out perfect,” Kenseth said. “We made some good changes and a lot of adjustments today and got it as good as we need it to be. Probably until I got off turn two on the white flag I got a good run there, but before that I was worried that Harvick had a pretty good restart. This tire is tough at this track — it’s so hard that you spin the tires. You had to roll it in the corners and try to keep from spinning it.”
Kenseth won at an average speed of 131.29 miles per hour in a race that had 22 lead changes among 11 drivers.
The victory ended six second-place finishes before Kenseth got his next Nationwide Series race.
“I didn’t think of my other finishes but we’ve had a few finishes where we came up short at the end of the race,” Kenseth said. “I really thought on the restart we had a 50/50 chance of beating Harvick. I just didn’t know on that short run.
“Kevin got around Jeff Burton but to be totally honest with you I didn’t really know where he was at with seven laps to go.”