At the end of a long two-man duel between pole-sitter and race winner Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick, James Buescher came within a whisker of stealing the show.
But driving his own No. 18 Toyota, Busch surged ahead off Turn 2 Saturday at 1.058-mile New Hampshire Motor Speedway after a restart with two laps left in TheRaceDayRaffleSeries.com 175 to win the Truck Series race by .280 seconds over Buescher, who took issue with Busch’s tactics on Lap 174.
Harvick, who swapped the lead with Busch 14 times before Buescher passed them both on Lap 166, finished third. Matt Crafton ran fourth, followed by rookie Austin Dillon.
Todd Bodine came home ninth and leads eighth-place finisher Aric Almirola by 257 points in the battle for the series championship. NASCAR.com
“It was a close race,” Busch said. “The guys gave me a good truck today, but I tried messing it up. I couldn’t go for the first 20 laps or so, but after that, we could run away. It took that long just to get going. I knew if we were going to have a race with late cautions, it would be a real pain.”
Buescher’s second-place run matched his career-best finish in the series. He also finished in the runner-up spot in May at Dover.
“I got a pretty good restart I thought, and I almost had [Busch] clear going into turn one,” Buescher said. “He beat me through the center, but I was hanging on at the exit, and he tried to squeeze me into the fence. I had to lift, and he ended up hitting the fence. I guess if that’s how he wants to win, then we’ll go try to win Las Vegas [next Saturday].” MiamiHerald.com
FIN CAR DRIVER MAKE 1 18 Kyle Busch Toyota 2 31 James Buescher Chevrolet 3 2 Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 4 88 Matt Crafton Chevrolet 5 3 Austin Dillon * Chevrolet 6 17 Timothy Peters Toyota 7 13 Johnny Sauter Chevrolet 8 51 Aric Almirola Toyota 9 30 Todd Bodine Toyota 10 47 Bobby Hamilton Jr. Chevrolet 11 7 Justin Lofton * Toyota 12 90 Donny Lia Toyota 13 5 Mike Skinner Toyota 14 23 Jason White Chevrolet 15 181 David Starr Toyota 16 60 Stacy Compton Chevrolet 17 12 Mario Gosselin Chevrolet 18 192 Dennis Setzer Chevrolet 19 85 Brent Raymer Ford 20 39 Ryan Sieg Chevrolet 21 164 Peyton Sellers Chevrolet 22 10 Jennifer Jo Cobb * Ford 23 1 Carl Long Chevrolet 24 33 Ron Hornaday Chevrolet 25 89 Mike Harmon Ford 26 57 Norm Benning Chevrolet 27 106 Tim Bainey Jr. Chevrolet 28 46 John King Ford 29 4 Ricky Carmichael Chevrolet 30 171 Eddie MacDonald Ford 31 93 Mike Garvey Chevrolet 32 7 Butch Miller Dodge 33 124 Chris Lafferty Chevrolet 34 0 Brian Weber Chevrolet 35 6 Donnie Neuenberger Chevrolet 36 95 J C Stout Dodge
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