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closeBusch's midrace save? Big, but late charge was bigger
THATSRACIN.COM OPINION
DAVID POOLE
The Charlotte Observer
Sunday, Jul. 06, 2008
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Don't let the predictably wacky ending Saturday night's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway fool you into believing that Kyle Busch fell into another victory.
Busch might not have held Carl Edwards off if the final lap of a green-white-checkered finish could have been completed before a half-dozen or more cars wrecked behind them in Turn 1. As it was, they were almost door-to-door when a caution ending the race came out.
But he also might have won without facing Edwards' challenge if NASCAR hadn't looked the other way when Jeff Gordon, second on the final restart, spun and came to rest on a runoff area entering Turn 1 as the rest of the field rumbled by - still under green.
Before all of that, before NASCAR slaked its bloodthirsty desire for the kind of mayhem that's now all but inevitable at the end of a restrictor-plate race, two moments showed why it's no fluke that Busch has now won a third of this year's first 18 Sprint Cup races and emerged as THE story of the 2008 season.
First, Busch wouldn't have been around at the end if he hadn't made a remarkable save on Lap 83.
Busch was chasing Dale Earnhardt Jr., who led a race-high 51 laps before getting banged out of the mix in the late going and finishing eighth. Busch got a big drafting push down the backstretch from Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin, but when he pulled out to try to pass Earnhardt Jr. he darn near ended his night.
"The air pinned the nose of the car to the race track and I got squirrelly there," he said. "I had to slow it down and get it straight and rode the apron."
When you're doing that at 185 mph in front of a pack of 40 cars it's considerably more dicey than Busch made it sound. He dropped to the rear of that pack, holding on for dear life because his tires got so hot he was basically skating on them for a few laps.
That save allowed him to work his way back into the hunt over the second half of the race. He was back to third after a two-tire change on his final pit stop with less than 30 laps to go, setting up for his second big moment.
Busch was second behind Jeff Gordon on a restart on Lap 153 and looking for his chance. It came on Lap 156, when Gordon moved just far enough off the bottom of the racing groove to open the door.
"The Roush cars behind us were really strong when they got tied up together," Busch said, speaking of Edwards, Matt Kenseth and David Ragan. "They were really working well as teammates. I think it was the 17 (Kenseth) who had a great run on the outside. ...Jeff and I were down on the bottom going down the backstretch and Jeff pulled up to block the 17.
"But he couldn't come back down soon enough. He couldn't turn from the top lane down to the bottom in time to block my run. So he was stuck where he was."
Busch had his Toyota's nose ahead of Gordon's Chevrolet when at least six cars wrecked in Turn 3. That lined up Gordon and Edwards behind Busch for overtime laps.
On that restart, Busch did what the leader of any plate race does. He laid back to keep a gap from forming between his car and that of his would-be challengers, who need such a gap to gain momentum to make the kind of run that had produced winners who were not leading at the white flag in the past three Daytona races.
"I actually might have hurt Jeff a little because when I went, he went with me and then he didn't go as hard as I did," Busch said. "I don't know if he backed up again and then the 99 (Edwards) got a run on him and then got to his inside and dumped him."
That's sort of what happened. Kenseth, who would wind up third, called the last restart "really odd."
"It was about 20 car lengths late and everybody was running into each other like crazy," he said. "I've never been hit so hard and hit people so hard through a green flag."
Despite the late hi-jinks, there wasn't a whole lot of postrace anger or controversy.
Edwards and Busch rode around side-by-side under caution back to the checkered flag and beyond as NASCAR reviewed video to see who was leading when the final yellow happened. But Edwards said he sensed all along that he hadn't made it past Busch in time, and wasn't surprised when Busch was ruled the winner.
Gordon, meanwhile, wasn't happy that a good run wound up as a 30th-place finish. But he said he spun on the penultimate lap largely because he came across the nose of Edwards' Ford. He was kicking himself, actually, lamenting the fact that he left the bottom lane open for Busch to pass him in the first place.
It was almost as if everyone seemed resigned to two things. One, at the end of a plate race you just count yourself lucky to make it back to the garage with all four wheels on. And two, until the checkered flag flies on any race this year, if you plan on winning you'd better plan on dealing with Kyle Busch first.