Halloween will be celebrated throughout the world Monday, but Martinsville (Va.) Speedway got into the act by serving up an early treat to Kyle Busch during Sunday’s TUMS Fast Relief 500, then tricking him late in the 500-lap NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at the .526-mile paperclip-shaped oval.
Busch led four times for a race-high 126 laps and was in the top-five with less than 40 laps to go when he was involved in a four-car accident in turn three that caused significant damage to his No. 18 M&M’s Halloween Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) and dropped him to a disappointing 27th-place finish.
“It’s disappointing,” Busch said. “We had a great M&M’s Camry all day and Dave (Rogers, crew chief) made some great calls. I’m not sure if the 17 (Matt Kenseth) cut a tire or what, but he got into us heading into turn three and we got turned around. It’s just part of short-track racing at Martinsville.”
Replays showed Kenseth locking up his brakes entering turn three, which caused the right-front of his Ford to make contact with the left-rear of Busch’s Toyota. Busch’s M&M’s Halloween Camry did a full 360-degree spin before the right-front of the car made contact with the SAFER Barrier on the outside retaining wall.
Busch drove to pit road so Rogers and the M&M’s team could evaluate the damage, but because Martinsville is the shortest track on the circuit at just .526 of a mile, there is minimal time to survey and fix crash damage without losing laps as the field circles the track under caution. With the No. 18 team in a hurry to leave pit road and stay on the lead lap, the M&M’s Halloween Camry exited without the lugnuts secured to the left-front tire. As Busch went down the backstretch seconds later, that left-front wheel came off the car and rolled down the backstretch and Busch was forced to drive a three-wheeled car back to the pits.
From there, Rogers and the team discovered they would need several laps to repair the original damage and, by the time the car was repaired enough for Busch to return to the track, the No. 18 Toyota was eight laps behind the leaders.
“We made some errors on pit road,” Rogers said. “Our day was done as soon as we made contact, but we were trying to salvage as many laps as we could. We made some errors there and we’ll take a look at the tape and talk about it as a group and see what we can do better. What happened is the right-front tire changer was working on the right-front (damage) and, to speed up time, the rear changer came over and knocked the lug nuts off the left-side (tire). So there were no lug nuts on the wheel and I knew that and, initially, it was, ‘Hey, let’s not lose a lap, let’s try to stay.’ My fault. I was trying to get too greedy. I should have just took the one-lap, two-lap penalty and got what we could. I didn’t and, instead, I initially told Kyle that we were going to try to beat the pace car off (pit road).”
Despite the accident and issues on pit road, Rogers was still happy the majority of the race.
“This M&M’s Toyota Camry was really fast,” Rogers said. “We led the most laps again – this is the second time this year that we’ve led the most laps at Martinsville. Really proud of Kyle (Busch) for the way he raced today on the racetrack and then the way he handled adversity when adversity struck. There’s just hard racing at the end, there. The 17 (Kenseth) got into us coming off turn two – I don’t know if he cut his right-front (tire) or not. Then got into turn three and 17 had his tires locked up and drove into our left-rear quarter. I’d like to think it’s good, hard, clean racing at Martinsville and we’re a victim of circumstance at a short track. It caught Kyle by surprise and he didn’t know he was going to take a shot in the left-rear and he did.”
Busch’s JGR companions – Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Toyota Camry, and Joey Logano, driver of the No. 20 Toyota Camry – finished fifth and 18th, respectively.
Tony Stewart won the TUMS Fast Relief 500 to score his 42nd career Sprint Cup victory, his third of the season and his third at Martinsville.
Jimmie Johnson finished .170 of a second behind Stewart in the runner-up spot, while Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick and Hamlin rounded out the top-five. Jeff Burton, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Martin Truex Jr., Carl Edwards and Ryan Newman comprised the remainder of the top-10.
There were 18 caution periods for 108 laps, with 11 drivers failing to finish the 500-lap race.
Busch and Hamlin represent JGR in this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup. Busch fell one spot to seventh in the standings and is now 57 points behind Chase leader Edwards. Hamlin remained 11th in the standings and is now 80 points out of first.
Logano dropped one spot and now sits 23rd in the standings with 837 points.
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