SONOMA, Calif. (June 26, 2011) \u2014 Sonoma County is famous for wineries, not woodsheds, but Kurt Busch found the latter Sunday at Infineon Raceway, administering a good old-fashioned whipping to his NASCAR Sprint Cup competition in the Toyota\/Save Mart 350.<\/p>\n
Busch led 76 of 110 laps and beat runner-up Jeff Gordon to the finish line by 2.685 seconds to win his first race of the season and the 23rd of his career, tying him with Ricky Rudd for 26th on the career win list. The victory, which broke a 38-race drought, was Busch\u2019s first on a road course.
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\nBy staying out front for most of the afternoon, Busch avoided the wildness exploding behind him \u2014 including a revenge play featuring Tony Stewart and Brian Vickers and sustained late-race drama involving Juan Pablo Montoya and a host of extras.<\/p>\n
Gordon, who was mired in traffic for much of the day, parlayed pit strategy into his second-place finish by staying out on old tires late in the race. Series leader Carl Edwards did the same and came home third, extending his advantage in the standings to 25 points over second-place Kevin Harvick, who finished ninth Sunday.<\/p>\n
Clint Bowyer ran fourth, followed by road-course ace Marcos Ambrose and polesitter Joey Logano. Jimmie Johnson, Martin Truex Jr., Harvick and Brad Keselowski \u2014 Busch\u2019s Penske Racing teammate \u2014 completed the top 10.<\/p>\n
Busch and crew chief Steve Addington hit on a two-pit-stop strategy for a race in which most drivers would require three stops. It worked to perfection.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe developed the strategy from practice,\u201d Busch said. \u201cIt gave us the calculations we needed, and it showed that we could make it on two stops. A lot of guys said that they couldn\u2019t make it on two stops, so we knew there were going to be teams pitting around Lap 10, Lap 15 to get those fresher tires.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo my thought was, inside the car, \u2018Well, I need to continue to push this car hard and run a lap time that won\u2019t allow those guys with fresh tires to chop off (the margin) and catch me. It was just one of those feelings where the crew was helping me, I was helping them, and the race played out perfectly for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Busch led Truex through Turn 11 on Lap 87, but right behind him, Vickers jack-hammered Stewart into the tire barrier, destroying the rear end of Stewart\u2019s Chevrolet. The back of Stewart\u2019s car came to rest on top of a stack of tires, unable to move.<\/p>\n
Vickers, who waited for Stewart to pass him before wrecking him, exacted revenge for a Lap 37 incident in which Stewart pile-drove Vickers\u2019 Toyota into the same corner and started a seven-car chain-reaction collision that collected Dale Earnhardt Jr.\u2019s Chevrolet and eventually knocked the No. 88 out of the race.<\/p>\n
Busch stayed on the track during the final caution and led the field to a restart on Lap 92. From that point on, it was no contest.<\/p>\n
On more than one occasion, Montoya drove aggressively through the field, only to be derailed by contact with other cars. On fresh tires late in the race, he advanced to the sixth position before turning Kasey Kahne\u2019s Toyota and falling back.<\/p>\n
Soon after that incident, a three-car wreck involving Montoya, Keselowski and Kyle Busch dropped Montoya to 22nd at the finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got through the corner, and I just got on his bumper a little bit and moved him a little,\u201d Montoya said of the incident with Keselowski. \u201cGot a good run, and I guess he didn\u2019t like it \u2026 he just plain and simple wrecked us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, Keselowski had a different view.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t take any pride in all that stuff, but at some point, you\u2019ve got to run your own deal,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was pretty obvious that it was eat or be eaten, and I wasn\u2019t going to be eaten.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SONOMA, Calif. (June 26, 2011) \u2014 Sonoma County is famous for wineries, not woodsheds, but Kurt Busch found the latter Sunday at Infineon Raceway, administering a good old-fashioned whipping to his NASCAR Sprint Cup competition in the Toyota\/Save Mart 350. Busch led 76 of 110 laps and beat runner-up Jeff Gordon to the finish line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45,195],"tags":[15775],"class_list":["post-5874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nascar","category-road-racing","tag-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}