Kyle Busch gets out the broom for Dover sweep

Kyle Busch never looked back after taking the lead around half-way to win the Dover 200 Saturday.   The No. 54 team got Busch out first during a series of pit stops and the Las Vegas native scored his fifth win at the concrete oval.

“Our day was really good,” Busch said.  “Our Monster Energy Camry was awesome. Adam (Stevens) and the guys did a great job of preparing a good car.  We were a little skeptical yesterday because of final practice not going the way we wanted it to.”

The No. 54 team was looking for speed early in the weekend and crew chief Adam Stevens felt they were a lot closer than the previous weekend.

“As practice went, we just kept getting further and further off,” he said.  “Neither one of us had a good feeling about how we ended, so we made a fair amount of changes today with Kyle’s feedback and the strength of the team.”

Saturday’s race was very similar to the race in May, when Busch took the lead from Joey Logano over a series of pit stops and on to the win.  Busch led the final 101 laps on the day and cut the deficit of the No. 22 team’s points lead to 32 points in the owner standings.  The two teams battled for the owner’s title in 2013, with the No. 22 team edging the No. 54 team by a scant point. 

“It’s kind of ironic, I guess,” Busch said when Saturday’s race compared to the May race.  “I was there running fourth (today) I think it was and I was just biding my time, but I was really stuck behind those guys. I wanted to go run the outside (lane), but the outside was so much slower that I could never make up any ground on the 60 or the 2 in front of me, so I waiting for them to slip off the bottom or waiting for lapped cars to get involved.”

Saturday’s race was the fifth win for Busch on the season, with all of his wins coming on tracks one mile or shorter in length.  Busch’s fifth NNS win at Dover leads all-time and conducted his first NNS sweep there since 2010.

Joey Logano and Chase Elliott were locked in a battle for the second spot, but the No.22 Hertz Ford came home runner-up.  Logano has four wins at the Monster Mile and led most of the first half of the race.

“The first half of the race went perfect,” Logano said.  “We were able to have a very fast Hertz Mustang that could go out there and lead a lot of laps.  These Nationwide races are so short that you put four tires on and it doesn’t act just right and you gotta put two on the next time, you’re not able to have the opportunity to try to fix your car.”

Logano is still winless in NNS in 2014 and doesn’t know when his next start will be in NASCAR’s second-tier series.  The No. 22 team has won four times this season with Brad Keselowski (three) and Ryan Blaney (one).

Elliott extends his points lead to 26 over his JR Motorsports teammate Regan Smith.  The 18-year-old driver had to battle back from getting damage to his No. 9 car in an early accident.  Lapped cars Kevin Swindell and Tanner Berryhill were battling for position when the two got together in front of Elliott and the No. 9 car tagged the back of the No. 93 of Swindell.

“I was proud and frustrated at the same time,” Elliott said of his day.  “Made a mistake and following those guys way too close. That was completely my fault.  The guys did a fantastic job taped back up in a way that the fender wasn’t going to fly up on us.”

The NNS points leader picked his way back up through the field to score the third-place finish and retain and increase the points lead.  Unofficially, the top five drivers in points are separated by 64 points in the standings.

NNS still has five more races to go as the series heads to the 1.5 mile Kansas Speedway for the Kansas Lottery 300 next Saturday. Matt Kenseth is the defending winner of the race.

Dover 200 Top Ten

  1. #54 Kyle Busch
  2. #22 Joey Logano
  3. #9 Chase Elliott
  4. #60 Chris Buescher
  5. #11 Elliott Sadler
  6. #42 Kyle Larson
  7. #2 Brian Scott
  8. #7 Regan Smith
  9. #6 Trevor Bayne
  10. #3 Ty Dillon
Kyle Magda