August 11, 2008
By Ron Felix
Photo Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR
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23 year-old Kyle Busch earned his eighth victory of the 2008 season on Sunday in the Centurion Boats at the Glen. Busch led 52 of the 90 laps to complete his sweep of the two road course races on the Sprint Cup schedule, he also won at Infineon Raceway. The win for Busch was his 12th career victory in 136 tries and Busch has now won a total of 16 races this year -- in all three series total, the Craftsman Truck, the Nationwide and the Sprint Cup Series. In the final laps Busch had one eye on the track and one eye on Tony Stewart, who was running second.
“I knew he was going to be hard to beat," said Busch. "I was racing against the same stuff with Tony Stewart and Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota so I knew it was going to be hard to beat Tony (Stewart). He’s such a great friend and such a great teammate and I’m really going to hate to see him leave at the end of the year. He has been so fun to work with this year."
Busch maintains the top spot in the unofficial NSCS point standings with a 242-point lead over second-place Carl Edwards. Busch’s win today also solidifies the first place position when the ‘Chase for the Championship’ starts in five weeks.
The race was red-flagged for an hour to clean up the mess on the track, caused when nine cars piled up on the entrance of pit road. Almost all nine cars suffered severe damage. Bobby Labonte appeared to be the only driver that was injured and he was transported to a local hospital for further evaluation.
Tony Stewart held on for second place. Stewart was pressuring Busch until the red flag but when the race resumed Stewart couldn't catch him.
"I’m not sure that we were going to be fast enough to get by Kyle," said Stewart. "He never made a mistake -- he had a really good car today and he was fast in all the right spots that he needed to be fast in. I think he ran a perfect race today and I thought we were really close.
“When you know that your car was really close -- if we were off then I think we would be more disappointed," Stewart continued. "I’m pretty happy with the run today. It’s hard to be disappointed with that because the good thing is that we’re back on track and it’s not all about wins. There’s a bigger prize at the end of the year than an individual race. The last three weeks have been good for us and the last two weeks to finish in the top-two, there’s a lot of guys that would love to have two weeks in a row where they could say they finished second. No complaints leaving. I thought that if we ever could have gotten track position on Kyle that we might have been able to do something. I think if we would have been leading when the red flag came out and our balance was like it was at the end then he would have gotten by us anyway. I can’t be disappointed with a second place run to a teammate like that. He’s on fire this year.”
Marcos Ambrose, who won Saturday's Zippo 200 Nationwide Series race at Watkins Glen, had a great run -- coming from 41st spot to finish third.
“It’s just a great weekend all around," Ambrose said. "I thought yesterday was great, but when I wound up there on that red flag, I realized where I was. I was behind Tony and in front of all those other great drivers. I’m just really excited that I’ve been given an opportunity and I’ve able to be making the most of it. You know, you don’t get many chances in life to do something special like this, and today I’m going to look back at very fondly."
Juan Montoya also had his best finish of the year, by driving from 25th starting place to bring his Dodge home in fourth.
"The crew did a great job and we had a fantastic car," said Montoya. "We got a little messed up on the second pit stop. I’m not sure what happened. The pit stop itself was OK, but the pit lane that we were in screwed us up a bit and we lost some spots. When you have to go back out and pass five or six guys that you've already passed, you just kill your brakes and makes it hard to run good laps. Other than that, we had a really clean race.”
Martin Truex Jr. was fifth followed by Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin, Jimmie Johnson, A.J. Allmendinger and Carl Edwards to round out the top ten.
Dale Earnhardt, Jr. looked to have the car to beat early in the race, leading twice for a total of 33 laps. But an ill-timed caution took away the team’s pit strategy for the race and mired the Hendrick Motorsports driver deep in the field. He finished 22nd and now sits fourth in the point standings.
"What are we going to do to get a good finish? I was happy we had a good car, we learned a lot at the Saturday race," said Earnhardt. "I lost a lot of foot brakes as the race got going and the car got real tight. The splitter was on the ground a little bit too much but that sort of did foil our strategy. More important I think is trying to get the car more durable. I really wasn't running that hard out front and I was actually slowing down and taking it easy when Jimmie (Johnson) was catching me. I didn't push the issue any harder and the front brakes just quit on it. If we can fix that and get the thing where it will turn. I don't know as the day goes it gets hot and slick."
Jeff Gordon lost radio contact with his team when they were closing in on the first green flag stop of the race. The delay in getting Gordon to pit road put the four-time NSCS champion deep in the field, and coupled with handling issues, he was never able to recover. He finished 29th in the race and remains sixth in the standings.
"It stumbled back through the inner loop and I thought, oh, this thing must be getting close," Gordon said. "I wondered when they were going to call me in and then I saw the black flag and I was saying, 'Hello, hello?' I started talking to them and that's when I knew we were in trouble. I was just hoping to make it back around. I didn't know if I was going to make it back."
The Sprint Cup Series moves to Michigan International Speedway next Sunday August 17th, 2008, for the 3-M Performance 500. The race is scheduled to start at 1:00 PM / Eastern Time on ESPN. The race will also be broadcast live on SIRIUS Satellite Radio Channel 128.
For full final race results...
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