Kyle Busch scored his record-tying 10th Nationwide Series victory of the season Saturday at the Texas Motor Speedway. The No.18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver led 174 of 200 laps and held off a hard-charging Carl Edwards in the final laps to tie Sam Ard’s 1983 series record for most wins in a season.
The victory was also Busch’s 21st for his career, placing him in a tie with Dale Earnhardt and Harry Gant for all-time series wins.
“Sam Ard is one of the pioneers of this sport and one of the guys who built this deal,” Busch said. “To be tied with him in 10 wins, that’s pretty spectacular and really special to me…I told myself during this race that he had health issues, so I am going to go ahead and give him $100,000. I am going to try and help him out some and see what I can do. It’s not much, but it’s something that can try to help him and everything he’s going through.”
The strong run by Edwards, combined with Clint Bowyer’s sixth-place finish, moved Edwards within 91 points of the series leader with two races remaining.
Edwards, who won the Nationwide title a year ago, is second in both this series and Cup, where he will try to cut into Jimmie Johnson’s 183-point margin in Sunday’s Dickies 500.
Edwards gave up some track position Saturday, falling from second to fifth when he took four fresh tires during a late pit stop, while Busch and Mark Martin, who finished third, took two. But Edwards quickly moved forward, taking second place from Martin on lap 196 and getting within three car lengths of the leader on the final lap.
“Man, I needed about two more laps,” said Edwards, who drove from fifth to second after the final restart with seven laps to go. “We got 25 points on (Bowyer) today and now 91 points is completely doable, so I’m happy about that.
“We both had good cars today, but we got him with that late call (for four tires) and a little bit of traffic at the end.”
Mark Martin ran third on Saturday, followed by Joey Logano, David Ragan and Bowyer. The No. 20 JGR Toyota, which has been driven by Busch, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin and Logano this season, leads the owners’ standings by 54 points over the No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet driven exclusively by Bowyer.
Unfortunately for Bowyer, the handling on his Chevy began to deteriorate after the final restart.
“We had a better car than [Edwards] did,” Bowyer said. “We just got a little tight there at the end. That last caution really hurt us.”
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