Hours after winning a Camping World Truck Series race in a runaway, Kyle Busch staged a repeat performance in Saturday night’s Stater Bros. 300 Nationwide Series event at Auto Club Speedway.
In claiming the 22nd Nationwide Series victory of his career, Busch became the first driver ever to win two races in any of NASCAR’s top three series on the same day. Busch had come close once before, finishing second to Jamie McMurray by .005 seconds in a July 2007 Cup race at Daytona after winning a rain-delayed Nationwide race earlier in the day.
On Sunday, he’ll try for another record—a weekend sweep of NASCAR’s top three series at the same race track.
“It’s awesome,” Busch said after climbing out of his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. “This is just a blast. It’s pretty special to beat guys like Carl and Kevin (Harvick). To win here twice in one day is even more special.”
Despite building leads of up to 11 seconds at times during the race, it all came down to the restart on lap 135 after Edwards beat Busch out of the pits by the length of the hood on his No. 60 Ford.
On the restart, Busch nudged Edwards and dove under him as Harvick, in third, made it three-wide for several seconds before Edwards slipped all the way to fifth. Busch easily led the rest of the way, beating Harvick to the finish line by 1.011 seconds — most of the front straightaway and almost the same margin he had in beating Todd Bodine in the truck race.
Busch’s JGR teammate Joey Logano held off a determined bid by Edwards to finish third in the Nationwide event.
“Definitely, the best car won—that’s for sure,” said Edwards, who fell back after battling Busch and Harvick on the final restart. “That was amazing. Kyle was just in a league of his own [Saturday night], so it was tough to be able to hang with him for most of the night.”
The victory came in the first race back for crew chief Jason Ratcliff, suspended along with fellow crew chief Dave Rogers for the final 10 races of last season and Daytona after the Gibbs team was caught trying to manipulate the results of an engine dynomometer test at Michigan.
“I’ve been dreaming about this,” Ratcliff said. “It’s a heck of a way to come back.”
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