Buescher’s win shakes things up in race to Chase

Over the last two NASCAR Sprint Cup seasons, we’ve had medical waivers granted to two of the sport’s biggest stars after they endured lengthy recovery periods.

They had two basic stipulations to become eligible for the Chase. Win a race and get to the top 30 in points by the Richmond cutoff.
Now we have a whole new scenario to deal with, thanks mainly to Mother Nature.
Chris Buescher, racing for the underfunded Front Row Motorsports team, won Monday’s rain-delayed Pennsylvania 400 at Pocono Raceway that was called 22 laps short of the finish after fog enveloped the 2.5-mile tri-oval track.
Talk about a truly lucky break. Buescher, the 2015 XFINITY series champion, grabbed the lead at lap 124 after a cycle of green-flag pit stops, and the caution came out nine laps later for the weather issues.
Five laps after that, the race was officially called and Buescher was awarded the victory, his first as a Sprint Cup driver.
In terms of the Chase standings, the win was nice – even if it wasn’t done in a full race, which doesn’t matter at all – but Buescher isn’t in just yet.
With five races left to run until the top 16 are set, Buescher sits 31st, but only six points behind David Ragan. In the greatest of ironies, Ragan has the only other win earned by Front Row Motorsports when he went to Victory Lane at Talladega in 2013.
Seems like it should be a piece of cake to make up the deficit, right? That’s true, but the remaining tracks between now and Chicagoland are more than challenging.
Next week, the series hits the road course at Watkins Glen in upstate New York. That track featured a wicked wreck by Brad Keselowski in a test session last week and offers a ton of unpredictability, rain or shine.
After the season’s final off week, they’ll head for Bristol on Aug. 20 for the Saturday night race. We know the history there and the beating and banging that goes on.
Then the final three races before the Chase happen at Michigan (2-mile), Darlington (1.36 miles with two ends as different as night and day), then the ¾-mile at Richmond.
Buescher has been running at the finish in 17 of the 21 races this season, but Monday’s win was his first top 10 with the first laps he’s led (12). Prior to today’s win, his best finishes were 14th at Indianapolis last week and 18th at Dover.
As for Ragan, who drives for BK Racing along with Matt DiBenedetto, he’s been inside the top 20 just twice all season – 16th at Daytona last month and 17th at Dover.
Right now, Kyle Larson is the driver who’s sweating serious bullets on the Chase bubble, the last of five who don’t have a win but would still get to run for the 2016 title.
Adding to the stress, even if Buescher slips into the top 30, there’s no guarantee someone else higher in the points won’t earn a win in the next five races.
We could get Kasey Kahne, the seemingly forgotten one at Hendrick Motorsports. He hasn’t been to Victory Lane since Atlanta in 2014, 69 races ago. Trevor Bayne still has only the 2011 Daytona 500 on the resume, but he was fifth at the Bristol spring race.
Buescher also beat two more highly-touted rookie drivers to the win column. Chase Elliott would be in the running for the title at this moment, but he’s only 25 points clear of Larson. Ryan Blaney finished 11th at Pocono, his best since he was 10th there in June.
Elliott has been in a major slump since he was runner-up at Michigan. In the six races since, his average finish is 27.6. Blaney, who is tied with Bayne and 28 points behind Larson, was 35th at Kentucky and 36th at Indianapolis.
We may see some serious movement in the standings between now and Sept. 10. Everything could flatten out and become predictable, too.
Only one thing is certain. We’ll be watching, speculating and keeping the tinfoil conspiracy hats tucked away in our anxiety closets.
Follow Tom Zulewski on Twitter @Tomzsports and email tominator19@yahoo.com.
NEXT WEEK’S RACES
Watkins Glen International (2.45-mile, 10-turn road course), Watkins Glen, N.Y.
-SPRINT CUP: Cheez-It 355 at the Glen, Sunday, 2:30 p.m. ET/11:30 a.m. PT, USA Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.
Race distance: 220.5 miles, 90 laps.
2015 champion: Joey Logano
-XFINITY SERIES: Zippo 200, Saturday, 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, CNBC. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.
Race distance: 200.9 miles, 82 laps.
2015 champion: Joey Logano
-CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: Off until Aug. 17 for the UNOH 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Kurt Busch conquers Pocono, ends drought

Considering it had been nearly a year -- 34 races, to be precise -- since Kurt Busch last saw Victory Lane, an extra 24 hours certainly didn't make the feeling any less sweeter when he took the checkered flag Monday in the Axalta We Paint Winners 400 at Pocono Raceway.

Even with a substitute crew chief in Johnny Klausmeier on his pit box, Busch got the right read on his fuel mileage, led the final 32 laps, and held off Dale Earnhardt Jr. for his first Cup win since last year's first Michigan race.

Not a bad way to put yourself back in the Chase and become the ninth different race winner of the 2016 season.

And when it came to the fuel mileage, which can be an issue on the 2.5-mile triangle track, Busch was genuinely surprised when told how much he needed to save.

"I was like 'whoa. How many laps shy are we?'" Busch said in the post-race media center interview. "They said two. These are really long straightaways at Pocono and you have to manage fuel as well as maintaining lap time."

In the end, Busch had enough fuel to not only earn his 28th Sprint Cup win by just over a second over Earnhardt Jr., but he completed the burnout with enough fuel left to park the car in Victory Lane.

With the second half of the "regular season" officially under way -- only 12 races left until the Chase -- we may be on pace to have a similar number of Chase qualifiers as we did last year (13). 

Kyle Busch may be leading the way with three wins already in defense of his championship, but there's always something new and entertaining to make you pull your hair out about the guy. Seems that a debris caution that came out while the No. 18 was leading at lap 89 was reason to bark on his radio that NASCAR was favoring rookie Chase Elliott.

Elliott assumed the lead during the pit stops and held it for the next 29 laps, but finished fourth. Busch's day took a rapid turn downhill when he got together with Ryan Newman and hit the Turn 1 wall. He would head to the garage and end up 31st.

Of course, anything other than first is never good enough for Kyle, but that's fine. Passion is good. Accepting disappointment and moving forward is much better.

In the final stat analysis, there weren't a lot of lead changes to talk about, but the racing is getting better when Pocono handles four- and five-wide racing with a few hearts that skip extra beats and leave fans wondering where the moves came from.

We'll still have our angry moments as we move forward -- see Brad Keselowski's issue with a comment Fox analyst Jeff Gordon made on his team's pit road penalty during the broadcast -- but they don't need to stick around any longer than necessary.

After all, the next race is right around the corner.

Follow Tom Zulewski on Twitter @Tomzsports or email tominator19@yahoo.com

NEXT WEEK'S RACES

Michigan International Speedway (2-mile oval), Brooklyn, Michigan.

-SPRINT CUP: Firekeepers Casino 400, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT, Fox Sports 1. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 400 miles, 200 laps.

2015 champion: Kurt Busch.

-XFINITY SERIES: Menards 250 presented by Valvoline, Saturday, 1:30 p.m. ET/10:30 a.m. PT, Fox Sports 1. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90.

Race distance: 250 miles, 125 laps.

2015 champion: Kyle Busch

-CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: Rattlesnake 400, Texas Motor Speedway (1.5-mile D-shaped oval), Fort Worth, Texas, Friday, 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT, Fox Sports 1. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 400 kilometers (250.5 miles), 167 laps.

2015 champion: Matt Crafton.

Fuel-mileage gambles backfire at Pocono

When it comes to NASCAR racing at any of the three national series, discussion of fuel mileage makes most people who don’t have an engineering background cringe.
They’ll cry that watching the cars go around a race track for an extended period of time gets boring after awhile, or “it’s just cars turning left and going around in circles all day.”
Those who saw the Windows 10 400 on Sunday afternoon at Pocono Raceway and believe in the power of logical thinking got a tension-filled finish as the race leaders tried to travel the final 92.5 miles (37 laps on the 2.5-mile triangle track) on a single tank of gas.
Something that should be noted here: a typical tank in a NASCAR Sprint Cup car holds around 18.5 gallons of fuel and averages around 4.5 miles per gallon.
Joey Logano tried to make it. His tank on the No. 22 Ford ran dry with three laps left.
So that opened the door for Kyle Busch, who was only going for his fourth win in a row. He fell a very long straightaway short of the finish line before his fuel cell expired.
Martin Truex Jr. was going for the season sweep of the Pocono races. He never got to the front as his tank burned the last drops of gas before the white-flag lap.
Matt Kenseth, who had never won at Pocono before, let alone in a fuel-mileage fight to the finish, captured the best of both worlds and picked up his second victory of the season.
In the big picture that is the final run to the Chase, Busch’s fuel-mileage gamble didn’t put him into the top 30 in points, but it didn’t push him two steps backward, either. With only five more races to run before the Chase field gets locked down, Busch actually gained some ground, but still needs 13 more points to meet the last condition and get into the run for the title.
In the final finishing order, Truex Jr. was 19th, Logano 20th and Busch 21st. From racing for the win, that’s how badly any gamble on fuel mileage can hurt.
For those who were a little more prudent on fuel – the final 63 laps were run under green – the rewards were great. In addition to Kenseth, who finished a comfortable nine seconds ahead of Brad Keselowski, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Greg Biffle completed one of the more unlikely top-5 runs they’ve had in a long while.
Biffle sat 14th in the running order with 10 laps to go, Gordon was 16th and Dale Jr. was 17th. For Biffle, it was just his second top-5 run of the entire year and first since a runner-up to Carl Edwards at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte in May.
That’s how fast things can change. One driver’s heartbreak is another one’s nirvana, or so the saying goes.
For Kyle Busch, though, Sunday’s disappointment is only a minor bump in the road. As the series hits the road course at Watkins Glen next weekend, Busch already has two wins there (2008, 2013) and an average finish of 11.3 in 10 career starts.
He’s also the last driver to sweep the road course races (Sonoma), having done the double in 2008.
As the final five races to the Chase unfold, keep your eyes open the rest of the way. You just never know where the next roll of the automotive dice will lead.

-Among the cooler developments of the race weekend, Saturday's XFINITY Series race was nothing short of awesome, especially for how the win unfolded.

Ryan Blaney should have won last week at Indianapolis, but made one measly mistake that was just enough for Kyle Busch to slide by him on the final lap and get the victory. With Busch and the rest of the Cup regulars staying away, Blaney didn't have it easy in the stretch run at Rusty Wallace's 7/8-mile oval.

The 22 had to survive four restarts over the final 24 laps, but Blaney held off a charging Brendan Gaughan early and Regan Smith late to earn his first win of 2015. Blaney led 252 laps -- two more than the original advertised race distance -- and it was just barely good enough.

Let that effort be a lesson to all of us. If you make mistakes, you get back up, dust yourself off, and come back better than you were before.
One other note to update everyone on, since the Utah papers did not do so: Michael Self, who makes his home in Park City, made his XFINITY debut at Iowa on Saturday night. After qualifying 19th, he was running really well and staying on the lead lap in the 01 for Nebraska Transport Company in a Chevrolet, but made contact with the wall at lap 145 and ended up 32nd.

Tom Zulewski has covered multiple forms of auto racing in his 18 years as a sports journalist. Readers from wherever they are in the world can join the merry band of Twitter followers @Tomzsports.

NEXT WEEK'S RACES

Watkins Glen International (2.45-mile road course), Watkins Glen, N.Y.

SPRINT CUP: Cheez-It 355 at the Glen, Sunday, 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 355 kilometers (220.5 miles), 90 laps

2014 champion: A.J. Allmendinger

XFINITY SERIES: Zippo 200 at the Glen, Saturday, 3 p.m. ET/Noon PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 200.9 miles, 82 laps.

2014 champion: Marcos Ambrose.

CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: Off until Aug. 15 for the Careers for Veterans 200 Presented By Cooper Standard and Brad Keselowski's Checkered Flag Foundation at Michigan International Speedway.

Does Truex Jr. have shot at Pocono sweep?

When NASCAR raced at Pocono Raceway eight weeks ago, Martin Truex Jr. was a total beast in the No. 78 Furniture Row Chevrolet. He led 97 of the 160 laps and earned the third win of his Sprint Cup career.
Since then, Truex has slid backward. Although he was third at Michigan the week after his win, the 78 finished 42nd at Sonoma and 38th at Daytona to go with 17th at Kentucky and 12th at New Hampshire.
But the small sign of a rebound returned at Indianapolis last weekend, where Truex finished fourth. So that sets up the logical question for math geeks like me.
Can Truex get the sweep as they head to Pocono for the second run of the season at NASCAR's most unique track?
Sure, it's doable, but sweeps at the triangle -- they've been racing twice a year at Pocono since 1982 -- don't happen very often. Jimmie Johnson (2004), Denny Hamlin (2006) and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (2014) are the most recent to pull it off. It can happen again with Truex, but don't bank on it unless we get a perfect storm of these elements coming together:
-Chevrolet has won the last six Pocono races. Joey Logano was the last non-Chevy to reach Victory Lane when he won in the No. 20 Toyota from the pole for Joe Gibbs Racing in the June race in 2012.
-In the last decade at Pocono (21 races total), six winners have started from the pole: Hamlin (twice - his 2006 sweep), Kasey Kahne (June 2008), Tony Stewart (June 2009), Logano and Johnson (June 2013).
-In the same time frame, seven have started from well outside the top 10 and won, including Carl Edwards (29th in June 2005) and Jeff Gordon (27th in August 2012).
Edwards holds the Pocono record as the driver who came from the furthest back in the field to win.
Even with the possibilities for Truex, we can't ignore the elephant in the room, and it's clearly Kyle Busch, who is an interplanetary marvel with his Superman-like comeback.
Nine starts, four wins, three in a row.
Busch was ninth in June and didn't lead a lap. He got as high as fourth at lap 130, but faded back.
Can Rowdy extend his hot streak? The math says it's not likely. In 21 career Pocono starts, Busch has only four top-5 finishes -- none since August 2011 -- and an average finish of 18.3.
Then again, we didn't think he'd be on the roll he's on to get Chase-eligible coming in. Right now (breathe, haters...breathe!) Busch still has to erase a 23-point deficit on 30th-place Justin Allgaier. The last of the deficit could be wiped out this weekend. Or a big-time slip-up could happen.
Busch lost his engine at this race a year ago and finished 42nd. He was 43rd -- dead last -- at Michigan after a wreck in June.
Truex, meanwhile, didn't have much success at Pocono prior to his win in June. In 18 previous starts, he led a total of 11 laps and finished in the top 5 twice. Not good.
If you're picking your fantasy racing team for this weekend, here's some simple advice before qualifying happens tomorrow.
Save yourself the headache. Choose someone else in the field
Tom Zulewski welcomes followers and comments on Twitter @Tomzsports. He'll be a guest on the NASCAR Happy Hour Garage this weekend at nascarhappyhour.com

High-drag race package was drag at Indy

Let’s get the essential preliminaries out of the way first. Kyle Busch dominated at the Brickyard. He swept the weekend with a last-lap pass that beat Ryan Blaney and gave him the XFINITY Series victory in the Lilly Diabetes 250, then raised the restart to an art form over the closing laps as he won the Jeff Kyle 400.
Busch has four wins in the last five weeks and became the first driver to win three straight races since Jimmie Johnson did it in 2007 on the way to his second of six Sprint Cup titles.
But after the essential, well-deserved platitudes for Busch – who may bust my previous prediction of making the top 30 in points by Bristol on Aug. 22 a lot sooner now – there was a deeper issue for those who raced and those who watched.
The new high-drag race package for Indianapolis Motor Speedway was a drag on the joy and the emotion of what’s supposed to be the second-most popular race of the Sprint Cup season.
Look no further than the closing laps for the best case why. Despite the field’s best efforts, no one could complete a pass on anyone who was in the lead. A total of six drivers led at Indianapolis on Sunday.
The more clean air the driver had, the better the car behaved. Less clean air, the only real passing zones were at the exits of the corners. It’s back to the drawing board – not only for the tech geeks in NASCAR, but for the non-fans of the driver of the No. 18.
Busch is a Rembrandt when it comes to restarts. When the win was on the line, he proved it to perfection Sunday. But if you read the Facebook posts from various pages discussing his win, the respect is nowhere close to being there, not even in begrudging form.
“NASCAR handed him another one,” cried one poster.
“NASCAR will make sure he gets (in the Chase), one way or another,” howled a second.
And there’s this gem that’s so ridiculous, you can’t help but laugh.
“Anybody who says Kyle Busch is doing a good job is in denial. He's getting a lot of help from NASCAR, that's why nobody's coming to the races.”
The stands looked pretty empty at Indy, but suffering a broken leg and fractured bone in a foot and trying to heal from it as fast as possible doesn’t matter, I guess.
It certainly does to Busch. Through all the pain, all the physical therapy, all the weeks watching David Ragan run as the relief driver of the M&Ms Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing, getting back to doing what he loved was all that mattered.
News flash: Busch returned to the 18 in the space of exactly three months. He raced in the All-Star Showdown at Charlotte Motor Speedway, then raced for points for the first time in Cup in 2015 at the Coca-Cola 600.
To borrow a line from one Sprint Cup sponsor, that’s freaky fast. Even freaky faster, Busch was in Victory Lane at Sonoma just five races later.
And the momentum hasn’t stopped.
Bottom line here: Even with this seriously on-fire streak, Busch is still not in the top 30 in points. Bad news for those who’d rather not be a fan of the 18: All of the winning is cutting up the deficit like a machete through a tire. With six races still to run before the Chase, Busch is only 23 points behind Justin Allgaier, who sits in the cutoff spot.
And like it or not, Busch will make the top 30 and could very easily do it after this weekend’s race at Pocono.
I am not a fan of particular drivers, but I am a fan of a good story. Busch’s run of success is one of the best stories we’ve seen in NASCAR in a long, long time.
It’s time for those who choose to hate to embrace and respect what we’re seeing or find something else to spend the emotion on.

Tom Zulewski is passionate about auto racing and welcomes new followers and comments on Twitter @Tomzsports.

NEXT WEEK'S RACES

Pocono Raceway (2.5-mile tri-oval), Long Pond, Pa.

SPRINT CUP: Windows 10 400, Sunday, 1:30 p.m. ET/10:30 a.m. PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 400 miles, 160 laps.

2014 champion: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: Pocono Mountains 150, Saturday, 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT, Fox Sports 1. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 150 miles, 60 laps

2014 champion: Austin Dillon

XFINITY SERIES: US Cellular 250 presented by New Holland, Iowa Speedway (.875-mile oval), Newton, Iowa, Saturday, 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, NBC Sports Network. Radio: SiriusXM Channel 90 or your local MRN Radio affiliate.

Race distance: 250 laps, 218.75 miles

2014 champion: Brad Keselowski.