Kyle Busch celebrated by shelling out over $5,000 on 10 bottles of champagne at Body English in the Hard Rock.
To win on his home track, in front of a sellout crowd of more than 140,000—including many family members, friends and acquaintances he grew up with in Las Vegas—was unquestionably the biggest victory in the young 23-year-old’s still budding racing career.
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“Me and my brother watched this thing be built from the ground up,” Kyle Busch said of LVMS. “I didn’t know if I’d ever win here, but this is pretty cool. This is pretty awesome, pretty special.”
In the whole big scheme of things, a win in Vegas is just one of 36 on the Sprint Cup schedule. But Busch now knows why former teammate Tony Stewart was always so determined to win on his own home race track, the fabled Indianapolis Motor Speedway—where Stewart has now won twice in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard (2005 and 2007).
“This is probably as big as the Daytona 500,” Busch said. “I said it wasn’t going to be, but it is. This is the feeling of a lifetime.”
“Guys, I don’t believe it,” Busch said over the radio. “This is awesome.”
“Sometimes you don’t have the best car, but you have to dig and claw at it,” replied crew chief Steve Addington.
“We just had to battle back,” Busch said. “We didn’t have the best car out there, but we had a car we kept on working on. I don’t know where I get credited for winning this thing, whether it’s from the back or from the pole. Either way, we conquered both of them.”
He celebrated with thick burnouts through the grass, then apparently blew his engine again. Enveloped in thick white plumes of smoke, he emerged from the clouds to make his trademark bow to the crowd.
He then collected the checkered flag from NASCAR, and kneeled to kiss the finish line on the track.
“I just had to kiss the ground this place was built on,” he said, recalling every phase of construction.
Photo Credit: Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR
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