LONG POND, Pa. — Three races, three cars, three states and three days is what Kyle Busch attempted last weekend. It was a game effort, but probably not something he’ll do much more of this season because he got worse as he went along.
After a second-place finish in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race Friday at Texas Motor Speedway, Busch finished 20th in the NASCAR Nationwide Series event Saturday at Nashville, then 43rd on Sunday at Pocono.
Busch took the pipe on lap 46 at Pocono, moving hard right down the straightaway to get in line — with Jamie McMurray’s Ford between he and the wall.
“I saw the 26 (McMurray) get high, get loose and thought he faded back further than he did when the 84 (A.J. Allmendinger) passed him,” Busch said. “Didn’t know he (McMurray) was out there still. We broke the mirror trying to adjust it there before the race, and I couldn’t see anything out my right-rear quarter panel.
“So I couldn’t clear myself. The spotter didn’t say anything, so I apologize to McMurray for wrecking their day. It sucks!”

• One thing that wasn’t on Busch’s agenda was wadding up his primary car in Saturday’s practice. Busch got loose off turn three, saved it and turned down pit lane, only to lose it again and drill the inside pit wall head-on.
The damage was severe, and his crew pulled out the backup for practice No. 2.
Sam Hornish, Jr. rearranged the front of his Mobil 1 Dodge and Tony Stewart scraped the wall with his Home Depot Toyota as the track temperature continued to climb throughout the morning.

• Greg Biffle had a car that was worthy of the top five, but a pit-road speeding penalty on his final stop knocked him back to 15th at the finish.
“I just screwed it up on pit road,” Biffle said. “I don’t know, something’s not right with the car. I don’t know what happens. We get close to the end of the race and it’s like something changes, either bump stops or something. But it just got so loose I couldn’t drive it. I think a bump stop broke, maybe. But we’ll get back and diagnose it, see why it got so loose, and then we’ll go to Michigan and see what we can do.”
Biffle said he was a tick early back to the gas leaving pit road.
“I don’t know what happened. I guess I broke out that last [pit] box a half-a-mile an hour [too fast]. I guess what happened was I was right on the maximum and then I just gave it gas a millisecond before I was across the line. You know, it goes off the rear bumper and I had to learn that last year when I got caught a couple times — because the timer is on the rear bumper so when your nose crosses the stripe, that doesn’t count, it’s when your rear bumper crosses. I thought I was patient enough to know when my rear bumper crossed before I gassed it, and I must’ve picked it up in the middle of the car, or something, but it was a half-a-mile an hour.”

• Denny Hamlin had a chance to get up into contention with Kasey Kahne over the final run, but couldn’t get past Toyota teammate Brian Vickers to do it.
“We really didn’t have a whole lot for the 9 (Kasey Kahne) there at the end. His car was too strong. We got to the 83 (Vickers) and as soon as we got there he moved down into our line and we just couldn’t make any headway. We had about a second- or third-place car all day and that’s where we ended up.
“We just couldn’t get around him. These cars are so aero-dependent — you just can’t get behind somebody and pass them. It’s just tough.”
Hamlin whacked the side of Jason Leffler’s car on an early pit stop, pushing the right-front fender in.
“It actually seemed like that’s when we were best,” Hamlin said. “It’s just a situation where he (Jason Leffler) was coming in and we were coming out. No big deal. The FedEx Ground crew did an excellent job to prepare the car. We just couldn’t get it all quite figured out.”

• A.J. Allmendinger was a force all weekend, qualifying seventh and finishing 12th, his best Cup finish.
“Everybody at Red Bull Racing, first off — great job to everybody at Red Bull, back at the shop, the 83 and 84 guys, and BV (Brian Vickers) did a great job,” said Allmendinger. “To have us 12th — and honestly that was a terrible finish for us, we got screwed by that yellow when Kyle (Busch) spun. We were about to pit and that put us back to 23rd. We probably should have been sixth, seventh or eighth — right around there — with Kurt (Busch) and Matt (Kenseth).”
Allmendinger has performed well after stepping out of the car early in the season in favor of veteran Mike Skinner. What did he learn?
“Just to be confident in myself,” Allmendinger said. “There was stuff wrong — the 84 guys, we just needed to get better as a whole and it wasn’t all on my shoulders. It wasn’t all on my shoulders. I’ll always take some blame for it. We just need to keep getting better as a team. As a whole, that it all wasn’t on my shoulders. When I got back in the car, I was more confident and just trust myself more.”

• The recent spike in fuel prices apparently hit Pocono hard. Both Friday and Saturday, there were hardly any cars on Long Pond Road, an hour before practice was to start. The campers were notably absent as well, at least on Friday and Saturday. Sunday’s crowd was thinner than usual, too.

• The car counts traditionally dwindle during the first few races of the summer, and Pocono is where it starts. This year, there were 45 cars entered for 43 spots, and that number was reduced to 44 when the No. 34 Chevrolet driven by Tony Raines was withdrawn on Friday.
As a result, J.J. Yeley was the lone entry to pack it up and head home to Charlotte after qualifying.