(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden

SPARTA, Ky. — Post-race review and analysis from the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Kentucky Speedway. 

Who Won? 

Kurt Busch. He jumped from fourth to first on the final two-lap sprint to snag his first win with Chip Ganassi Racing.

Who Claimed the Stages?

Kurt Busch and Kyle Busch.

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Busch brothers battle

The good news for Kurt Busch is that he’s leaving Kentucky Speedway with a guaranteed playoff berth after his first win with Chip Ganassi Racing.

There’s bad news too, though – he may need to find a new ride.

“He’s got to find his own ride home,” younger brother Kyle Busch joked afterward. “Because I’m not waiting for him.”

“I haven’t seen him, yet, but I was supposed to fly home with him, and now I’m looking for a plane ride,” Kurt acknowledged.

The elder Busch brother appeared poised to contend for a win entering the final round of green-flag pit stops. But a four-tire call at a time when track position was key left him trapped in fourth by the time they were complete. At the time the move seemed dooming for his No. 1 team, but a timely caution on Lap 262 for a spinning Bubba Wallace gave Kurt newfound opportunity on an NASCAR overtime restart.

Kurt would ultimately take advantage of it. He split the lead pair of Kyle and Joey Logano three-wide on the ensuing restart, and prevailed in an intense one-lap duel with his younger brother to score his 31st-career Cup victory.

 

Kyle had a brief moment going into Turn 3 where he appeared to clear Kurt. But the 2015 Cup champion didn’t feel comfortable about the move. “I think I could have slid up in front of him,” he said. “But I think if I did I would have knocked the wall down on the exit. It was just going to be carrying too much speed for how bad my front tires were, and how tight I was.”

Instead it was Kurt that prevailed, scoring his first win in a 1-2 result with Kyle after finishing second to him twice in the past at Sonoma Raceway (2015) and Bristol Motor Speedway (2019).

“What a battle with my little brother, to race him side by side, to try to play the chess game at 180 miles an hour on the side draft,” Kurt said. “We’re wide open through Turns 1 and 2, and we were trying to go wide open through 3 and 4, and it was a matter of me just staying as close as I could to his right rear quarter-panel because he was on my left rear down the straightaway, I had to be on his right rear through the corners. And as we drove down into Turn 3 on the last lap, I just stared straight at his door, I could see the No. 18 to my left and I never lifted until I heard him lift, and then I’m like, wait a minute, I’ve got to still miss the wall.”

Busch’s win served as a coming of age moment for the No. 1 CGR team. The group hadn’t won since Jamie McMurray’s final Cup Series triumph at Talladega Superspeedway in 2013, and many on the team had never celebrated a Cup Series victory, including crew chief and occasional short track racer Matt McCall.

“He came in and that was the goal from the very beginning,” McCall said of Busch. “I think he has a lot of credentials, right, so when he starts talking he tells you we’re coming in, we’re going to win, it’s definitely a confidence booster for sure.  He’s almost delivered and he delivered today, so it’s been pretty fun this first half of the season.”

“When I first met him, I knew he could be a winner,” Busch later said of McCall. “And he’s a winner now in the Monster Energy Cup Series. Tons of guys on this team, it’s their first win.”

The victory also came with the help of another Kyle – his CGR teammate Kyle Larson. The young star restarted behind Busch and gave him the push that propelled him to victory.

“I was going to be committed to Kurt (Busch)’s back bumper no matter how much of a run I had,” Larson said. “Because I knew I couldn’t get to the lead from the third row so if I could help a teammate out, I was happy with that.”

One week after an untimely storm cost him a victory at Daytona, a perfect storm of scenarios deliver Kurt Busch a breakthrough win with CGR. The victory offered Busch more than a playoff berth or short-term emotional boost. It supplied memories that can carry on with him after his driving career is over.

“I can’t wait to go watch the video of and tell people about it,” Busch said. “And show the sport of NASCAR and the production and the pride that everybody has to try to get to Victory Lane was shown in those last few laps.”

Logano’s late disappointment 

The Busch brothers stole headlines with their late battle in Sparta, but it was Joey Logano that led them to the green flag for the final restart. After spending most of the night in the top-five, Logano and Team Penske surged past Kyle Busch to take over what would become the lead after green-flag pit stops finished cycling.

Logano marched toward the finish from there, keeping Busch at bay while working through lapped traffic. The defending champion was cruising to his third victory of the year.

Then the caution flag flew, sending the finish to NASCAR overtime.

The leaders stayed out, leaving Logano to bring the field to the green flag for the final time. He chose the outside lane and tried to shoot out to the lead on the restart, but couldn’t find a way to clear Kyle Busch.

“I thought I was going to have a decent (restart), and then I just got stopped in the left-rear there,” Logano said. “Kyle got into me. It is what it is.”

The initial contact marked the beginning of the end for Logano. With Kyle still running alongside him, Kurt Busch made a move to take the pair three-wide for the lead. Logano couldn’t block it, and the subsequent battle left him free-falling through the field.

Kurt carried on to victory. Kyle settled for second.

By the time Logano made it to the checkered flag, he had dropped to seventh.

“My momentum was gone, and the (No.) 1 had a huge run,” Logano said of the move. “Where am I going to go? I can’t block them all. I tried to stop the (No.) 18 on his left-rear by side drafting, and then I saw the 1 coming. I felt like if I get in front of him… We were so low at the time, if I blocked the 1 he was just going to go to the middle and pass me. I felt like I couldn’t stop the 1.

“I was just in a bad spot. Once I got stopped on the left-rear on that restart, at that point I was a sitting duck.”

But while he wasn’t happy with his end result, Logano acknowledged the excitement of the final run to the checkered flag – though he had obvious biases against the ending.

“It was a great race,” he said “It was a lot of fun. I thought you had some strategy, you had a lot of cautions. You had probably the best Kentucky race we’ve ever had. Even down to that last bit – if I was a race fan, I’d say that was a cool finish.

“I may have been a little too close to the fire to say it was a cool finish right now.”

Playoff Shakeup

No one had a better seat for the battle for the win than Erik Jones – and it’s likely no one wanted the Busch brothers to wreck more.

“I think any racer would have been in my spot,” Jones admitted after Saturday’s third-place run. “You want that win, and I knew there wasn’t enough time and I didn’t have the car to do it against them. I needed a situation where they were going to move out of my way. They definitely tried to, but we just didn’t quite get there.”

But while Jones may have been kept away from an elusive first victory, Saturday’s performance was still a crucial result for his No. 20 team. Jones entered Kentucky on the wrong side of the playoff bubble after a summer slump that saw him drop outside of the playoff grid.

Saturday’s result turned that all around, shifting Jones to the right side of the playoff bubble by two points. It wasn’t enough for Jones to avoid stress over the coming weeks, but served as a step in the right direction.

“We built ourselves a big deficit through some misfortune and bad luck, and we’re digging out of it now,” Jones said. “But we’re doing a good job at it and doing the best we can.”

Jones was one of a host of playoff hopefuls to salvage good runs in the Bluegrass State. Kyle Larson followed the Michigander in fourth to keep his playoff pursuit on track. Clint Bowyer led the way for Stewart-Haas Racing in sixth – a run that he took after enduring a difficult weekend.

“It was a positive night for us,” Bowyer said. “We finally got some stage points the last two races. It didn’t start out good but we did a good job of working together, staying in it and not giving up.

Daniel Suarez rallied back from a difficult night that saw him drop from the pole to as many as three laps down to finish two positions behind Bowyer in eighth. The run wasn’t enough to life Suarez back into the top 16 — or to ease his disappointment — but it kept him within four points of a playoff position heading to New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

“I feel like we made the car better but we never got the track position back,” he said. “We had a tire going down and then I was speeding coming to pit road because I was wheel hopping because of the tire.

“It was one problem after another. We were fast enough to overcome that but not enough to get a better finish. I feel like the good thing is that we have the speed we just have to keep working to have a cleaner day and keep working to try to keep that speed the whole race.”

Ryan Newman and Roush Fenway Racing fell out of the postseason field, but kept within two points after rallying to a ninth-place result. The Hoosier was content with the run, but left lamenting his team’s lack of speed.

“We still have to get our performance better,” Newman said. “The guys did a good job on pit lane but we just have to have faster race cars.

“We didn’t have the balance quite right but you can’t come to the race track and qualify damn near wide open six-tenths of a second off the pole. We have some work to do and we know what to do.”

With the playoffs inching close, the drivers on the bubble continue to ebb and flow. Jimmie Johnson suffered a setback with a late spin and 30th-place run in Kentucky, negating the gains he’d made with top-fives at Chicagoland Speedway and Daytona International Speedway. Paired with the top runs of his fellow contenders, Johnson saw his advantage over the cut line drop to 10 points.

In all there are just 48 points separating 12th-place William Byron from Suarez in 18th, with the entire group winless leaving Kentucky. A few key runs — good or bad — could determine the fates of each driver in the collection.

Other Notes

  • Spire Motorsports suffered a quick crash to reality in its first race since the shock Daytona victory, starting 36th and finishing 34th with Quin Houff.
  • Austin Dillon had a roller coaster of a night. The 2018 Daytona 500 winner started in the top 10, fell as far back as 25th in Stage 1 due to pit strategy, rose back up into the top-five and ultimately finished a distant 35th after suffering mechanical issues mid-arc e.
  • Hendrick Motorsports shined the last time NASCAR raced on an intermediate oval, but the team struggled in Kentucky. Chase Elliot led the team in 15th, with Chicagoland winner Alex Bowman following in 17th. William Byron slotted in 18th, and Jimmie Johnson finished adrift of the field in 30th.
  • Chris Buescher’s strong 2019 continued on Saturday with JTG-Daugherty Racing. Buescher rallied to 10th to score his fourth top-10 of the year, matching his career-best total from 2017.
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Aaron Bearden Featured Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Quaker State 400