(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
Post-race review and analysis from the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
*Writer not present at the track this week. Observations are from afar.
Who Won?
Kyle Busch. He left little doubt en-route to a dominant victory.
Who Claimed the Stages?
Kyle Busch. Even a loose wheel in Stage 2 couldn’t keep the veteran from sweeping the day.
Top Stories
King Kyle
Saturday wasn’t the prettiest day for racing. Cold air, heavy winds and a constant mist led to a wet affair that constantly threatened to bring on-track activity to a close in Atlanta.
Most teams were ready to get the afternoon over with. But for Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series star Kyle Busch, Saturday was a day he’ll never forget.
Busch put on a performance that’s become standard for him over the years, particularly on the Cup Series support tours. With longtime friend Billy Ballew’s name on board, Busch soared ahead of the field to claim his 52nd-career NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series victory.
The win gave Busch the sole distinction as the winningest driver in the tour’s history, breaking a tie with former series stalwart Ron Hornaday Jr.. Of those 52 wins, 16 came with Ballew before Busch founded his own Kyle Busch Motorsports organization in 2009.
“It certainly means a lot,” Busch said. “I want to thank everybody at Cessna and Toyota and our amazing partners that get us here and allow us to do what we do.
“I had Billy Ballew on board with us here today and Billy’s right over here as well. It took getting Billy Ballew back on my truck to be able to get me a win here, so we might have to make that an annual recurrence.”
The victory didn’t come without trials and tribulations. Busch didn’t get to qualify after qualifying was rained out. He drove through to the lead in Stage 1, but was sent back after pitting for a loose wheel in Stage 2. The Nevadan rallied to retake the lead in the final 10 laps of the stage.
A large crash and lengthy red flag for cleanup forced Busch to wait for the victory with fewer than 10 laps remaining.
Darkness fell. The constant drizzle blanketing the field increased to a light rain. As Busch sat in his No. 51, water droplets splashing off his windshield, NASCAR officials debated the merit of restarting the race. An early decision seemed imminent, but the sanctioning body elected to wait things out.
Victory No. 52 was within reach. But the rains eventually lessened, and drivers were instructed to re-fire their engines.
Busch would have to withstand one more challenge.
KBM teammate Harrison Burton restarted alongside Busch for the final restart, but with the difficulties facing the high lane it was third-place Johnny Sauter that ultimately provided the final challenge.
He closed within a truck-length of Busch, within range for a move. Making a pass would prove difficult, but Sauter had a plan.
“Honestly, I was kinda trying to wreck him and I just couldn’t get there,” Sauter said. “I was locked onto him and I was hoping he would spin out, but he did a great job of blocking.”
But Busch held on. He stormed off to another dominant victory, securing the latest in a string of milestones.
The 2015 Cup Series champion now holds the distinction of winningest driver in both the Truck Series and Xfinity Series, where he has 92 victories. His 51 Cup Series wins place Busch 11th on the all-time series win list, and with 195 total NASCAR victories under his belt the Toyota star is just five wins from becoming the second driver to reach 200 NASCAR national series victories, joining Richard Petty.
He had little time to celebrate on Saturday. Busch’s had to shift his focus to Sunday’s Cup race, where he was set to start last after crashing in final practice. The run provided another milestone – Busch’s 500th in NASCAR’s premier series.
But make no mistake. Saturday’s win meant a lot.
“It was certainly a big deal for me and a big deal for our team,” Busch said. “Rudy (Fugle, crew chief) and these guys, they prepare some awesome trucks as do (Mike) Hillman (Jr.) and Marcus (Richmond). Certainly it’s a lot of fun to be able to come out here and race with my own team and to have Cessna as well as Toyota and TRD support and everybody that gets us to the track.”
The Perils of the High Lane
Harrison Burton found himself on the outside lane for the final restart on Saturday. A victory was close enough to taste, with clean track ahead of him.
But like the view from a side-view mirror, the lead was much further away than it appeared.
Burton was the last of many to fall victim to restarts on the outside lane Saturday, a trend that started with the afternoon’s Xfinity Series race and continued on through the 200-mile Truck Series event. A combination of track conditions made the outside line brutally difficult to start in, causing the field to stack up multiple times over the course of the weekend as they spun their tires and failed to fire off with speed.
Such was the case for Burton. The 18-year-old was in position to finish second when rains threatened to end Saturday’s race nine laps early, but he struggled on the final restart and faded. When the checkered flag flew the North Carolinian had dropped to eighth, a distant footnote to Busch’s latest win.
He made little effort to hide his frustration afterward.
“The outside is really bad here, especially when you have Kyle Busch to your inside,” Burton said. “I thought I got an alright launch in my Tundra at first and then getting from third to fourth was really hard struggling with spinning the rear tires. I’m bummed out. I raced my butt off all night and it just didn’t get our way. I want to win one of these really damn bad, so that kind of hurts.”
While he didn’t finish alongside Busch, Burton did catch his team owner’s eye by giving himself a chance to contend for a win.
“I wish we could have ended it,” Busch said of the race’s slightly rain delay. “I would’ve rather haven seen Harrison (Burton) finish second.
“I’m not sure how far he fell, but he ran a great race today. That was cool to see the 18 (Harrison Burton) right up there as well too in the Safelite AutoGlass truck.”
The Toyota prospect’s strong performance also positioned him well in the standings. Burton earned 46 points with stages included, trailing just second-place finisher Sauter. The haul lifted Burton to fifth in the championship standings leaving Atlanta.
He’ll have a chance to look for another strong run — and perhaps even a race win — next weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“I felt like as a team we built some momentum,” Burton said. “I felt like the middle part of the race we were really strong and running the top and passing a lot of trucks. I feel like as a team, we passed quite a few trucks, so that’s a good thing. My pit crew did really good, so we have a lot of things to build off of going into Vegas and that’s good for us.
“It makes our job a little bit less stressful having a little bit of fun and knowing that we have speed. Just need to be in the right lane on the next one.”
The Hot Seat
Busch was jubilant in victory lane. Burton was frustrated, but had many positives to take away from the race.
KBM teammate Todd Gilliland was less enthusiastic.
“It’s frustrating because we’re all in the same truck, but he makes it look so easy,” Gilliland said of Busch. “I don’t know. We’ll get there eventually I guess. I guess he’s pretty decent at this stuff. If nothing else, we can just learn from him and watch the race over and see what he did.
“Obviously there’s a big difference from where I was to where he was. Like I said, just try and get the gap smaller and smaller and hopefully be there one day.”
Gilliland entered the 2019 season with cause for optimism. He’d failed to reach the playoffs in 2018 after missing a handful for races due to his age, but had come within a lap of a race win on two separate occasions before losing to late-race contact and an empty fuel tank.
The third-generation driver entered the year with intention to contend for a playoff berth. But the opening two races have failed to go to plan. An opportunity to win in Daytona ended in heartbreak when Gilliland and Burton crashed in the closing laps, a result that left the Toyota prospect disappointed.
There was no crash in Atlanta – Gilliland just struggled. A lack of short-run speed proved too much to overcome throughout the evening, forcing the second-year star to rally through the field on each run. He spent most of the day as an afterthought, and finished behind Burton in ninth even after the rookie’s difficult final restart.
“We just were horrible on restarts the whole time,” Gilliland said. “I don’t know. We could never get going like our first five laps after a restart. We’d fall back to probably 20th every time. We were really fast after that, obviously, but we were way too far behind at that point.”
Just as he noticed Burton’s pace, Busch acknowledged Gilliland’s struggles after the race.
“We certainly have to work with him and continue to bring him up and get him filled in on what it takes to be fast at these places,” Busch said. “We’ll hopefully be able to get him places because you know his career is on the line. You don’t get very many chances at this and I’m sure that we’ll hopefully be able to get him going better.”
While the 2019 season hasn’t started off as well as he’d like, Gilliland has shown pace in the past. He’s contended for victories.
According to his team owner, Gilliland will need to contend again this year — with a few successful attempts along the way — to keep his current career path intact.
“He should have won two races last year, no question about it,” Busch said. “But obviously it just didn’t happen. He’s got to show up this year and make it happen.”
Other Notes
- Grant Enfinger’s streak of strong runs continued on in week two of the Truck Series season. The Alabamian finished third in Atlanta to take over the early points lead. He’s finished fourth or better in his last four starts dating back to 2018.
- Brett Moffitt was too far back to steal a victory like he did last year in Atlanta, but the defending race winner was still good for some late-race heroics. He rose to fourth in the final sprint to the finish, scoring his first top-five for GMS Racing.
- Few drivers have taken advantage of their opportunities quite like Ross Chastain thus far. Even after losing his Chip Ganassi Racing Xfinity Series ride following sponsor DC Solar’s offseason issues, Chastain managed finishes of 14th or better in each of his first five NASCAR starts of 2019 – including one Cup race, two Xfinity races and a pair of Truck starts.
- Stewart Friesen seemed poised to secure a top-10 in Atlanta, but a late flat tire relegated him to 18th. The Canadian is still searching for that elusive first win.
