Kyle Busch Dominates Bristol Weekend Again

Following an off week in both the NASCAR Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series, Kyle Busch took to the track on Friday, taking on the half-mile bullring, Bristol Motor Speedway. After leading 268 of the 300 laps in the Scotts EZ-Seed 300, Busch went on to win the event in fine fashion, and taking down another record with him in the process of leading 10,000 plus laps in Nationwide Series competition. The win gave Kyle Busch his 4th win in 5 races at Bristol.

“It’s big, and anytime you’re able to break any kind of series record with the likes of Sam Ard and all the guys that made this series what it is. It’s cool and I enjoy it. There’s still plenty more time hopefully to make some more.  You all keep making a big deal and Mark got one away from me, well I caught back up one today”, said Busch following the news of his record leading over 10,000 laps.

But with tires being the story of the weekend, Goodyear at the last moment on Friday night following practice in both series, decided with NASCAR to make a compound change; bringing in more than 1,300 tires from Charlotte, and throwing a monkey wrench into the drivers and crews.

“We had a little bit of info on that tire from last fall even though we ran the older car — we didn’t run the new Nationwide car.  I have to give a lot of credit to my engineer, Matt Lucas — him and I saw midnight come and go last night.   After that, it kind of went the direction that we thought it would.  We had some ideas, had some plans going in if it went that way.  Thankfully, it worked out. “said Dave Rodgers.

The weekend action didn’t end there with Kyle Busch and the No. 18 M&M team taking back to the track after qualifying the 12th position. It didn’t take long for Busch to see his Toyota Camry run to the front of the pack and fight for the lead by lap 53 of the race, swapping the lead back and forth with 5 time champion Jimmie Johnson.

Before the day was out, Busch would swap the lead 6 more times and leading for 153 laps.  Kyle then took control of the race after battling rival Carl Edwards on lap 475, and would lead for the remainder of the race, taking home his 5th consecutive race win at Bristol Motor Speedway for his 20th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series win; tying both his brother, Kurt, and Jeff Gordon for the most wins amongst active drivers.

“It was a lot harder today, that’s for sure.  Carl (Edwards) kept me honest there.  I was making a couple mistakes, but nothing we couldn’t rebound from.  This M&M’s Camry was awesome today.”

“This is cool to come to Bristol.”

The Sprint Cup Series moves onto Southern California’s Auto Club Speedway for the Auto Club 400, Sunday, March 27th.