A cut tire and a dropped cylinder ended the victory hopes of Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch, respectively, in Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
Newman was leading in his Alltel Dodge Charger with three laps remaining in the scheduled 334-lap race when he cut a tire in turn two on the 1.5-mile track, spun and hit the wall. The incident relegated the race’s pole sitter to a 28th-place finish and dropped him a position in the point standings to 15th.
“I felt it pop and it spun around and hit the wall, ” Newman, who led twice for 11 laps, said about the tire. “We tried to complete some more laps after that, but that was it. “
Newman had charged into the lead on a lap 330 restart following the 14th caution period with a maneuver that caught many off guard. The caution period had included a 12-minute 6-second red flag on lap 324, so NASCAR could thoroughly clean the track, which had oil on it. At that time, the top four were Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Clint Bowyer and Newman, respectively.
When the race restarted, the younger Busch went to the inside when Gordon’s car apparently vapor locked and Newman shot to the outside and into the lead.
“It was a good situation for us that turned bad about two laps later, ” commented Newman, who caused the 15th and final caution period that sent the race into a green-white-checker finish. “I think he [Gordon] vapor locked from sitting there [during the red flag] where the carburetor got too hot. I doubt he missed his shift. “
Busch’s engine woes in his Miller Lite Dodge Charger occurred after he fought back from a pit road incident on lap 191 during the race’s ninth caution period.
After making a fuel-only stop in a lightning-quick 5.884 seconds, Busch attempted to merge onto pit road from his pit stall, the first one entering pit road, only to collide with Mark Martin as he entered his pit. Busch sustained damage to his Dodge’s right-front fender and was forced to pit again the following lap to make repairs.
Busch was running 26th and was the final car on the lead lap for the ensuing lap 195 restart. With crew chief Pat Tryson preaching patience to his frustrated driver, Busch had worked his way back up to 16th when the race’s 11th yellow flag flew on lap 223 for Matt Kenseth’s turn-two crash. Tryson called for a fuel-only stop, which shot Busch up to seventh for the lap 228 restart.
Busch cleared Scott Riggs for fourth on lap 256 and was closing on the frontrunners. He was running consistent lap times of 30.450 seconds compared to the leader’s 30.700 seconds lap after lap. He had whittled away half of the 5-second deficit to the leader and appeared to be en route to once again contending for the win when the engine problem struck.
“We just dropped a cylinder, ” Busch, who started eighth and led three times for 13 laps, told his crew on lap 269.
Busch nursed his ailing machine to the finish, placing 26th. With five races remaining, Busch is now seventh in the standings, 315 points behind leader Gordon.
“We didn’t crash out of it like we have been doing here and we had a car capable of winning, ” Busch said after the race. “Hopefully, we’re turning the corner on getting a grip on this place. We’re not done yet here because we’ll be back Monday and Tuesday doing the tire test for Goodyear. We’ll keep after it until we make it to victory lane here in a Cup race. “
Crew chief Pat Tryson agreed with his driver that the Miller Lite team had turned the corner “on getting a handle on” the track that opened in 1960.
“We led the race and had a top-two or top-three car for the majority of the night, ” Tryson continued. “We had the incident on pit road that dropped us back to the tail end of the lead lap and came back to running fourth and having the strongest car on the track.
“I thought we had a car capable of winning at the beginning of the race and at the middle of the race. We fell behind after the run-in with the 01 car [Martin] on pit road, but we bounced back and again had a good shot of winning with only 60 laps to go. We were back up to fourth and running laps two-tenths (of a second) faster than the leaders and closing in. Unfortunately, we dropped a cylinder while Kurt was on course to win this thing and we were forced to just ride it out for the final 50 laps. ”
| 
|