As hot as the weather was at the NASCAR Xfinity series Lilly Diabetes 250 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, it was Kyle Busch who was cool under the collar having plenty to worry about in the final laps of the race.
Pole-sitter, Busch was the class of the field leading for 62 of 63 laps, but a late race caution brought the field back up to his bumper that eventually took the race into NASCAR overtime. Busch’s dilemma was having to race on older tires on his car when the likes of Kyle Larson and Kevin Harvick, who pitted for fresh rubber surrounding him for the restart and by all accounts had Busch’s goose cooked.
That’s when he proved there’s a reason why Busch has now 83 NASCAR Xfinity wins and did by fending off both Larson, first and later Harvick by .415 of second for his third Indy Xfinity win at the Brickyard and his third consecutive victory in the series.
“Well, the new tires for those guys was good for them, but not for so good for us having old tires,” Busch said. “Obviously, but I just dug in deep and gave it everything I had. I knew I had to get really good restarts in there. The last (restart), it was OK. I saw Harvick pull out (but he didn’t challenge).
Paul Menard finished third and Kyle Larson, who started two late restarts beside Busch, took fourth.
The two 20-lap Dash4Cash races entered Erik Jones, Justin Allgaier, Daniel Suarez and Elliott Sadler as candidates for the $100,000 bonus with Allgaier collecting the bounty by passing his JR Motorsports teammate, Elliott Sadler for fifth place on the white flag lap.
The Xfinity tour now heads to Iowa Speedway for the US Cellular 250 next Saturday night on NBCSN at 8 p.m. EDT.
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