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.