Kyle Busch completes weekend sweep at Texas
Saturday night's Sprint Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway looked a lot like Friday night's Nationwide race.
On Friday night, Kyle Busch drove away from the field after a late race restart to grab the win. And on Saturday he did the same thing, taking advantage of a super fast stop by his pit crew to snatch the lead from Martin Truex Jr. under caution and speed away when the race went green with 16 laps to go.
Truex was leading at the time of the caution with 21 laps to go, which came when Mark Martin hit the wall in turn 4. But Busch's team was quicker than Truex's as the entire field hit the pits and Busch led the pack out of the pits.
That preferred inside line was all he needed, as Truex was never able to mount a serious charge for the win.
"But if it wasn't for my pit crew, who is the most awesome group ever, and since 2008 we've been together, haven't had any changeover, those guys are just awesome," Busch said. "They pulled out one heck of a stop right there at the end to put us up front and give us that lead and be able to bring it home."
Points leader Jimmie Johnson finished sixth and extended his lead to nine points over Brad Keselowski, who bounced back from being a lap down to finish 9th. Busch is now in third, 18 points back.
It's Busch's second win of the season, and much like his first win at Fontana three weeks ago, he led the most laps.
For Truex, it was a similar ending to what was his last best chance at a win almost a year ago at Kansas Speedway. Then, Truex was passed for the lead with 31 laps to go by Denny Hamlin. Saturday, Truex's lead was over a second when that final caution flag flew.
"I'm just disappointed," Truex said. "The race was over when we got beat out of the pits. The bottom was so fast for the first couple laps and I was really worried, honestly, that I'd lose second because Carl (Edwards) was on the inside of me and I just was somehow was able to run one and two wide open to get him cleared. And then, that guy that gets clean air is hard to catch for 10 laps. And I just was a little bit tight behind Kyle and started catching him as we were running, and just (ran) out of time."
