Kyle Busch gets first XFINITY win at Vegas

Prior to Saturday afternoon, Kyle Busch had never visited Victory Lane in any XFINITY Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. With 77 career wins in NASCAR’s No. 2 series already in place on the resume, it would only be a matter of time.
After 11 prior misses, Busch put his foot down and delivered another dominating effort.
The Las Vegas native led all but one of the 200 laps and held off hard-charging teammate Daniel Suarez down the stretch to win the Boyd Gaming 300 on a windy, cloudy day at LVMS. Busch won his 78th XFINITY race in just his 313th start.
“Today was pretty special to finally get a win in the hometown and check that one off the list,” said Busch, who was runner-up in his two previous starts at Vegas. “I’m really excited to be able to accomplish that.”
Busch qualified on the pole earlier in the day with a speed of 182.698 mph, just ahead of Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Erik Jones – who overcame two pit-road speeding penalties to finish third – and Suarez. He wasted little time staying out front and only fell out of the lead during the race’s initial green-flag pit stop at lap 55.
“I think you saw this coming toward the end of last year when you look at JGR as a whole, how we started running on the XFINITY side,” crew chief Chris Gayle said. “It’s a big tribute to all the guys at the shop and all the work that was started last year, how it’s come over. It’s a lot of work by a lot of guys to make it happen.”
Suarez had a top-five car through most of the race and was able to chop off most of Busch’s lead after a red-flag period of 19 minutes at lap 138 for a wreck that involved Darrell Wallace, Cody Ware and Justin Marks in Turn 2. When the race resumed five laps later, the need to save fuel hit high gear.
“The fuel was a concern before the red flag,” Gayle said. “We didn’t know how close we were until we pitted on the last green-flag stop. At that point, after the red flag was lifted, the priority was keeping the lead. You never know how the cautions are going to fall.”
As it turned out, the red flag was the third and final caution of the race. Suarez closed within six-tenths of a second inside of 15 laps to go, but Busch had more than enough in his tank to close the deal and get the hometown win.
“Certainly there’s been a lot more following through the garage area after the (Cup) championship,” Busch said. “Typically this isn’t much different than the others. I know I didn’t make many friends when I was winning in the Bullring days, either.”
Suarez added: “It’s fun to drive fast race cars like that. Everyone worked hard the whole winter, and now it’s paying off slowly. It took me a while to figure out how to be fast with a loose race car.”
Chase Elliott and Austin Dillon completed the top five. Only 11 cars finished on the lead lap and the winning average speed was 145.415 mph.

Follow Tom Zulewski on Twitter @Tomzsports.

Kurt Busch wins pole at Las Vegas

Las Vegas may be home to Kurt Busch, but his hometown track was just as welcoming in qualifying for the Kobalt 400 on Friday.
For the second straight week, Busch won the pole at Las Vegas Motor Speedway after turning in a speed of 196.328 mph and time of 27.505 seconds in the final round of qualifying for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race. Busch broke the track record in the opening round, kicking up the speed to 196.378 mph and lowering the time to 27.498.
Even with the success, Busch nearly missed out on having a shot at the pole during the second round of three-round qualifying.
“I overdrove the car in Turn 2 in the second round,” said Busch, who also won the pole at LVMS in 2010. “We had to do an extra run, and it made for an extra pressure-cooker situation. All in all, you just have to play it cool and rely on your team members.
“The way the session unfolded for us, we were in perfect position by the time we got to Round 3.”
With only five minutes available to make the best possible lap in the final round, Busch made his count, beating Joey Logano by nearly seven-hundredths of a second. Logano ran his lap around the 1.5-mile oval in 27.572 seconds and 195.851 mph.
“Two poles in a row is reason to celebrate,” Busch said. “It symbolizes our hard work during the offseason to come out of the box and sit on two poles at two mile-and-a-halves right away.”
Logano rebounded from a 26th-place qualifying run at Atlanta last week, the first with NASCAR’s new low-downforce package. The driver of the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion said any falloff with the tires is to be determined when the 267-lap race gets under way Sunday.
“We saw some falloff yesterday when we were in race trim,” Logano said. “Today we never came out of qualifying trim. It was one lap, one lap, one lap.
“I think there will be more (tire) falloff than there was last year. It won’t be huge like last week, but there will be some, for sure.”
Matt Kenseth, a three-time race winner at Las Vegas, just missed passing Logano’s time, but still qualified third with a 27.582 at 195.780. Logano’s Penske Racing teammate, Brad Keselowski, will join Kenseth in Row 2 after qualifying fourth (27.598,195.666).
“We had a pretty decent day, just didn’t have enough at the end,” said Keselowski, looking for his second Vegas win in three years (2014). “I tried too hard to get the last little bit of pickup, and it wasn’t quite there.”
Austin Dillon and defending Kobalt 400 race winner Kevin Harvick will make up the third row. Aric Almirola, Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., Jimmie Johnson and A.J. Allmendinger completed the top 12 starters.

Follow Tom Zulewski on Twitter @Tomzsports..

Johnson ties Earnhardt on career win list

On the first official race of 2016 under NASCAR’s new low-downforce package, there weren’t a lot of drivers leading the field at the Folds of Honor Quik Trip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
But when those who did were engaged in the battle, it proved worthy of the race fan’s attention.
Try to ride comfortably? You risk getting blown away by the rest of the field. Mash the gas, risk losing your tires a lot sooner in a race run.
In the end, Jimmie Johnson made history in a wild finish, coming away with his 76th career victory to tie Dale Earnhardt for seventh on the all-time career list. And in the most appropriate moment of the season so far, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was the runner-up.
Johnson’s teammate at Hendrick Motorsports tweeted: “Congrats to my friend and teammate @JimmieJohnson on tying my father today in Cup wins. Proud to have ran 2nd on this momentous occasion.”
Not only was Johnson’s win momentous, but the racing was pretty darn awesome, too.
Although only eight drivers led laps at Atlanta, there were 28 lead changes among them. Passing was plentiful and caution flags were few, requiring pit crews to be on their quickest with the stops and crew chiefs to pay close attention to tire wear.
No yellow flags came out until lap 211. The second caution wasn’t until lap 324 for a Ryan Newman spinout, one lap short of the official distance.
Enter NASCAR’s new overtime rule. Once Johnson got past the official overtime line off the final restart, the race was over.
And the field didn’t get to the checkered flag before Johnson could take the white flag due to a four-car accident back in the pack. It left some fans up in arms, but the rule had to be put in place mainly because of the controversy surrounding restart issues on the green-white-checkered attempts of last season.
With Johnson’s win putting him in more elite company than ever before, it begs for truly legitimate questions. Will he get a seventh championship? Will he reach 100 wins?
Under the new Chase format, winning titles is the most difficult it’s been in NASCAR history. It’s not about riding around for maximum points anymore. Winning is rewarded handsomely, as Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick can certainly attest with their Sprint Cup crowns of the last two seasons.
There’s also good news and bad news about Johnson’s quest for 100 wins. The good: He got to No. 76 in his 509th career start, and that averages out to a win every 6.6 times Johnson gets in a race car.
The bad: Johnson is 40 years old and will hit 41 in September.
While the native of El Cajon, Calif., hasn’t gone winless in any of his 15 seasons as a Sprint Cup driver, time and normal wear and tear have a way of catching up to everyone.
Look no further than now-retired Jeff Gordon. Gordon may have 93 career wins, but he was shut out of the win column three times in his 23 seasons (1993, 2008, 2010) and was 44 when he stepped out of the car for the final time in 2015.
There haven’t been any rumblings about Johnson’s future yet or any signs he’s slowed his competitive pace. He led the fewest laps (558) of his career since 2005, but still won five races last season.
But none of us know what will really happen. As long as Johnson keeps winning, what’s to stop him from reaching for the highest heights possible?
Only Johnson himself – not fans, not social media, not media who cover the sport – will determine his place in the history of the sport.
Right now, Johnson’s place is heading toward the stratosphere. Let’s sit back, watch and enjoy it.

Tom Zulewski will be at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the 12th consecutive year starting Friday for the Boyd Gaming 300 and Kobalt 400. Follow him on Twitter @Tomzsports.

NEXT WEEK'S RACES

Las Vegas Motor Speedway (1.5-mile D-shaped oval).

-SPRINT CUP: Kobalt 400, Sunday, 3:30 p.m. ET/12:30 p.m. PT, Fox (check local listings). Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local PRN affiliate.

Race distance: 400.5 miles, 267 laps.

2015 champion: Kevin Harvick

-XFINITY SERIES: Boyd Gaming 300, Saturday, 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT, Fox Sports 1 (check local listings). Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local PRN affiliate.

Race distance: 300 miles, 200 laps.

2015 champion: Austin Dillon

-CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: Off until April 2 at Martinsville Speedway.

Race lineup for Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500

Not much to be said with this entry except: Below and here is the link to the running order for Sunday's Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway...
One interesting note: Kyle Busch was the original pole winner, but his qualifying time was disallowed. He'll be starting from the rear of the field, which has only 39 cars.
Going to be fun watching Kyle zip through the field. He won a race at Las Vegas (where the series heads next week...yay!) after starting from the back, so we know it can happen.
https://www.nascarmedia.com/news/stat_packages.aspx?LinkId=131876

Hamlin makes hearts skip a beat with Daytona win

Now that’s a way to start a NASCAR season.
Whether you watched Jeff Gordon make his debut with Darrell Waltrip and Mike Joy in the Fox TV booth or listened to the call via MRN on Sunday, what we saw in the Daytona 500 was special.
Denny Hamlin looked like he didn’t have enough left in the No. 11 FedEx Toyota to get his first victory in the Great American Race. Matt Kenseth, for all his struggle to get to the front after switching to a backup car, had his third career 500 win (2009, 2012) well within reach.
But when Hamlin got the push he needed from Kevin Harvick on the final lap and made the move that left Kenseth to fade back, the race to the finish was on.
And what a finish it was.
Hamlin, who was fourth as the field headed to Turn 3, somehow won the drag race to the line with Martin Truex Jr. and won his first Daytona 500. It was the first for Toyota and the final margin was a microscopic one-hundredth of a second.
Actual distance: 12 inches. And that may be too high of an estimate to the naked eye.
Not only did Hamlin win, he basically grabbed it from Truex Jr. over the final 100 feet, if even that much. Beating and banging without wrecking.
This was easily one of the best Daytona 500s in a long, long time. The finish was even closer than Harvick’s win by just .02 over Mark Martin in the 2007 race.
Hamlin admitted in his post-race news conference that he had no idea how he pulled the win off. Once he was able to get past Kenseth – one of his teammates at Joe Gibbs Racing – with a move to the inside that had serious potential to cause a huge wreck, it was gas-mashing time.
And Truex Jr. was the latest to be on the receiving end of heartbreak from another exhilarating Daytona 500 finish.
As the now-retired Jeff Gordon said in his debut broadcast with Fox on the finish, “I’ve got chills up my spine. That was amazing.”
It was the perfect capper to a Speedweeks that was chock full of storylines.
• Rookie Chase Elliott, who replaced Gordon in the No. 24, won the pole last week, but couldn’t avoid the infield grass early. He ended up 37th, 40 laps down.
• The consensus in the garage was that Dale Earnhardt Jr. had the car to beat, but he got into an infield wall with 30 to go and finished 36th.
• Despite qualifying on the outside pole and leading 40 laps, Kenseth ended up 14th when his block on Hamlin backfired.
Add in the challenges with the new charter system, fields limited to 40 cars, and a competitive Sprint Cup rookie class, and we’re just getting warmed up for the season to come.
The new low-downforce package is in play when the series gets to Atlanta next weekend. It will be intriguing to see how it performs on a mile-and-a-half track.
And after that, it’s Las Vegas Motor Speedway and the Kobalt 400 on March 6. It will be my 12th straight year covering the racing there, and I can not wait.
There are fun times and a fun season ahead. If you choose to call the racing boring, that’s your business, but it’s about time to push the focus on the positive.

Follow Tom Zulewski on Twitter, @Tomzsports.

NEXT WEEK'S RACES

Atlanta Motor Speedway (1.54-mile quad-oval), Hampton, Georgia

-SPRINT CUP: Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT, Fox (check local listings). Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local PRN affiliate.

Race distance: 500.5 miles, 325 laps.

2015 champion: Jimmie Johnson

-XFINITY SERIES: Heads Up Georgia 250, Saturday, 1:30 p.m. ET/10:30 a.m. PT, Fox Sports 1. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local PRN affiliate.

Race distance: 250.25 miles, 162 laps.

2015 champion: Kevin Harvick

-CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: GreatClips 200, Saturday, 4:30 p.m. ET/1:30 p.m. PT, Fox Sports 1. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local PRN affiliate.

Race distance: 200 miles, 130 laps.

2015 champion: Matt Crafton.

Chase arrives, but one change baffles

After two wildly successful years of NASCAR's knockout format for the Chase in Sprint Cup, there was a sense that the formula would trickle down to the XFINITY and Camping World Truck Series as well.
As of Tuesday, the vision of change turned into reality during NASCAR's annual preseason media tour at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

It won't be on as big a scale as it is in Cup, but the two lower-tier national series now have a Chase format to call their own in the race for the championship in 2016 and beyond.
Both the XFINITY and Truck series will do their Chase over the final seven races of the season. XFINITY will have 12 eligible drivers and the trucks will have eight. Across all of the series, round names have been eliminated. While XFINITY will eliminate four drivers after each three-race round, the trucks will only send two to the sidelines before the Championship 4 are set for the finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
And all Sprint Cup regulars are not eligible to race in either the XFINITY or trucks finale, which is an outstanding development. No clutter, just the focus on who will win the title.
The XFINITY series will have an interesting new twist during the season with the introduction of four Dash 4 Cash races -- Bristol (April 16), Richmond (April 23), Dover (May 14) and Indianapolis (July 23). There will be two heats (with odd- and even-numbered starting positions) and a main, similar to a typical Saturday night at a local short track.
The top two XFINITY regulars (no Cup drivers) from each heat become eligible for a $100,000 Dash 4 Cash bonus. If a driver wins two of the bonuses, it's as good as a regular race win and all but assures a spot in the Chase.
The XFINITY Chase begins with the opening round at Kentucky (Sept. 24), Dover (Oct. 1) and Charlotte (Oct. 7). When 12 get cut to eight, those drivers will face their last chances to make the finale at Kansas (Oct. 15), Texas (Nov. 5) and Phoenix (Nov. 12).
The Camping World Truck Series Chase races its first round at New Hampshire (Sept. 24), Las Vegas (Oct. 1) and Talladega (Oct. 22). After two drivers are eliminated, the final chances to get to Homestead happen at Martinsville (Oct. 29), Texas (Nov. 4) and Phoenix (Nov. 11).
But while the Chase is a welcome change, the truck series has a new rule being used throughout the 2016 season that can only be described as baffling.
A "caution clock" will run and a yellow flag will be displayed every 20 minutes from the drop of the green flag. If a caution comes out before that time expires, the clock resets once the race restarts. With the exception of Pocono and the road course at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, the clock is turned off for the final 20 laps.
At Pocono and CTMP, the clock is turned off over the final 10 laps due to the larger size of the tracks.
Quite frankly, I simply don't get why this rule is being implemented. It will make fuel-mileage racing a distant memory.
One of my favorite truck races from 2015 was when John Wes Townley won the Rhino Linings 350 at Las Vegas. There were exactly three cautions over the 146-lap race and the last 94 laps were run under the green flag.
It led to fuel-mileage gambles that backfired. Matt Crafton's fuel ran out with six laps left, and Cameron Hayley followed soon after that. Townley stayed out of trouble and earned his first series win in a pretty cool moment.
In terms of time, the race was run in a nice 1 hour, 38 minutes. With this new rule, there would be four additional yellow flags thrown simply for the short-attention-span crowd, and that's terrible.
Only two of last year's 23 CWTS races were run in over two hours. There were an average of 5.9 cautions per race, and two had more than 10 (Martinsville 2 with 12, Eldora with 13). The average time it took to finish a trucks race was 1:44.
If we do the math with the 20-minute caution formula, we are potentially adding six more cautions to the legitimate ones that are simply a part of the racing.
That makes no sense at all. It's a dumbing down of the racing and creating unnecessary time and expense for the race fan. That is truly a shame, but the only way we'll know how well it works is to put it to the test on track.
Let's just say there won't be a ringing endorsement from the Gear Box staff anytime soon.
Follow Tom Zulewski on Twitter @Tomzsports.

Goodyear test wraps up at Las Vegas

With the first official opportunity to work on the new lower downforce package, four past NASCAR Sprint Cup champions put the wraps on two days worth of Goodyear tire testing a cool, gray cloud blanket at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Kurt Busch (2004), sporting the fire suit of new sponsor Monster Energy, called the changes being made to the car "nothing too dramatic."

"We're trying to find the best possible combination of speed, handling and making the tire durable," Busch said during a lunch break between the morning and afternoon sessions on the 1.5-mile oval. "Most importantly, putting together a good product on track so the cars can race side-by-side more easily."

Matt Kenseth (2003) said the test at Las Vegas is only a small part of the work that lies ahead with the Daytona 500 only six weeks away.

"There's so much more that's done these days with computer simulation, the wind tunnel," Kenseth said. "It's nice to run those things at the race track to validate, but everyone's so much smarter with computers and engineering, everything's still going to be pretty close when you get to the track."

Kenseth came away from the Wednesday morning test impressed with the speeds, but cautioned to not read much into them.

"It's surprising how fast it's been, but we didn't do much with in-car stuff, just work on tire combinations," he said.

Six-time Cup champ Jimmie Johnson added that while his No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet was fast, the lack of tire falloff wasn't due to any issues with the lower downforce that should make the cars more challenging to drive.

"In the Kansas test (last season) with this package, we were able to create a lot of falloff with the tire," Johnson said. "With these cool conditions and the surface still so good, it's tougher to bring the falloff we're looking for. Bottom line...we were really fast."

Brad Keselowski (2012 champ) said last year's success with the low downforce package at Kentucky (6th-place finish) and Darlington (second) gave his No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion team plenty of reason for optimism heading to Daytona.

"Those were two of our best races last year," Keselowski said. "We're ready to work through the challenges."

In addition to the new downforce package, Ford introduced a new body style for the Fusion that Keselowski and the rest of their drivers will race in 2016. 

For more from the drivers at the Goodyear tire test in Las Vegas, head over to NASCAR Happy Hour or NASCAR History - 2003-current on Facebook. I welcome all followers on Twitter as well @Tomzsports.