Kyle Busch, who did not have the dominant car, wins the Duck Commander 500, which marks his fourth straight NASCAR race win at the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway. Busch wins his 36th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, his second win of the season, and a second win in Texas. Busch has won 22% of races he has run since returning to the circuit since his injury last season at Daytona. He is also 39 wins (in all three national series) from tying Richard Petty’s 200 wins, a record held since July 4, 1984. In order to be in position to win, Busch’s pit crew constantly made adjustments to the car on each pit stop. Busch took the lead from Martin Truex Jr. on a late race restart to clinch the win. Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished second, followed by Joey Logano, Jimmie Johnson, and Chase Elliott.
“Well, it was a really good effort. You know, Adam Stevens and all these guys, they come here well-prepared to start with, and had a good practice plan and everything, and we were able to set up our race car to my liking. Wasn’t necessarily the fastest qualifier, but we knew we had a good race car, and the things that we did kind of worried me actually for about the first two-thirds of the race, just not — the track wasn’t necessarily coming to us, but then all of a sudden it took a shift and things did come to us, and we had a really good car there at the end. Adam made awesome adjustments all night long, though, and kept us in the game and kept getting us better and took us from probably being a sixth-, eighth-place car, something like that, to then being able to run up front in the top three, and barring different tire circumstances or different restart circumstances at the end, giving us a shot to win,” said Kyle Busch in post-race media availability.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., who scored his sixth top-five finish at Texas Motor Speedway, talked about his night. “Well, we had a great car. We didn’t really know we had that good a car, but when the race started, we were real tight. We made some good adjustments to get the car handling well, and then really controlled the balance of the car the rest of the night with the track bar. We had about a second- or third-place car. Kyle put it on them at the end. He ran as hard as he could, and his car was there for him. Sucks for Martin because he had such a great car, but Martin has just got to remember that he’s going to get that opportunity again. They’ve got a great team. That’s it.”
Joe Gibbs Racing teams, including their affiliation with Furniture Row Racing and Martin Truex Jr., led an overwhelming total of 247 out of 334 laps in the Duck Commander 500. Hendrick Motorsports had all four of its team’s finished in the top-10 at Texas Motor Speedway, its first since this race last year.
Chase Elliott, the highest finishing rookie, talked about his first race at Texas in the Cup Series. “It was a solid night. Obviously I hated to have to start in the back, but I think having a good qualifying effort allowed us to get a good pit selection. I think that helped us to try to gain spots throughout the night, but the biggest thing was just having a good car. I was really happy with it, especially on the long run, and we made some gains throughout the night to try to help our short run speed. I thought we did that. Definitely still have some work to do on my end, and we’ll keep digging at it. We’re definitely not content. We know we have some work to do, and we’d like to be contenders. So we’re going to keep working at it.”
There were no issues in post-race inspection. NASCAR is taking the cars of Ky. Busch and Earnhardt Jr. back to the R&D Center in Charlotte.
Unofficially, Kyle Busch leads Jimmie Johnson by six points in the championship standings, followed by Kevin Harvick (-7), Carl Edwards (-18), and Joey Logano (-25).
The start of the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway was delayed by 1 hour and 50 minutes, and started under a green/yellow situation. The race saw 17 lead changes among eight different drivers. The caution flag flew seven times for a total of 41 laps. 16 cars finished on the lead lap. The time of the race was 3 hours, 37 minutes, and 16 seconds.
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teams will head to the “The Last Great Coliseum”, the .533 mile, Bristol Motor Speedway for the Food City 500. Action from Bristol Motor Speedway will begin on Friday, April 15th, at 11:00 am EST for the first practice on Fox Sports 1.
- Busch Sweeps at Bristol - August 20, 2017
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- Busch Scores NCWTS Bristol Pole - August 16, 2017