{"id":16993,"date":"2015-07-27T11:24:24","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T18:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=16993"},"modified":"2015-09-18T17:47:40","modified_gmt":"2015-09-19T00:47:40","slug":"kyle-busch-crushes-the-competition-at-nascar-crown-royal-400","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/kyle-busch-crushes-the-competition-at-nascar-crown-royal-400\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyle Busch Crushes the Competition at NASCAR Crown Royal 400"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NASCAR<\/a><\/p>\n

Kyle Busch kept his streak alive Sunday, winning\u00a0the prestigious Crown Royal 400 trophy at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with one of his strongest performances to date.\u00a0 He earned his 33rd<\/sup> Sprint Cup title and it appears there\u2019s no stopping him and his Joe Gibbs Racing Skittles Toyota team.<\/p>\n

Joey Logano and Kevin Harvick didn\u2019t make it easy on Busch, though, attempting to overtake him on the last three restarts, but couldn\u2019t find the speed, finishing second and third, respectively.\u00a0 The caution flag waved three times in the last ten laps, eventually leading to a Green-White-Checkered finish.\u00a0 Busch led only three times for 19 laps with Harvick leading the most for 75 circuits.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, I’ve definitely seen that movie before,\u201d said Busch, who had a mirror full of Logano beating him by .332 of a second.\u00a0 \u201cI think every single Saturday race here we’ve had a late restart and I’ve lost the lead every single time, but in the two that I’ve won I’ve gotten the lead back.\u00a0 Two years ago I got it back from Brian Scott; pretty much right after the restart, but then yesterday I didn’t get it back until the white flag and coming back to the checkered.\u00a0 You never know how it’s going to play out, but man, it’s so hard to win these things, and once you can get a guy out front and get him in clean air, typically you see that guy kind of stretch it and I knew if I could just protect the bottom — Joey was fast.\u00a0 He drafted on me a couple times, but if you just protect that bottom and not let that guy get a chance inside of you you’re really going to mess him up, and that’s what I had to do in order to win this thing today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In his dominance at the Brickyard, Busch became the first driver to win both the Xfinity and Sprint Cup races the same weekend, giving Toyota its\u00a0first Indy win while ending\u00a0Chevrolet\u2019s 12-year run. He also cut his margin to 23 points with six races to go to reach the coveted No. 30 position in the driver standings, gaining entry into the Chase to the Championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, once we become Chase eligible, which hopefully we will here shortly…\u00a0then all we’ve got to think about is those final 10 races and how to win one of those races in each round, pick out the best ones.\u00a0 You’ve got to win a race in each round just to get that automatic go to the next round, so in case something bad does happen and in my Chase successes, there’s always something bad that happens.\u00a0 So I’m well aware of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeff Gordon lost his chance at a\u00a0storybook finish at IMS 50 laps into the race.<\/p>\n

Gordon made contact with the wall trying to avoid Clint Bowyer and suffered significant damage to his car, heading to the garage for repairs. \u00a0Gordon eventually returned to the track but finished 42nd<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

“I was underneath Kasey Kahne and we were just racing for position,” Gordon said after stepping out of his car in the garage.\u00a0 “I saw Bowyer get sideways. \u00a0I don\u2019t know what caused it.\u00a0 Me and Kasey were trying to check up to avoid it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if he got loose or we just both got loose together.\u00a0 Then I just lost control and got in the wall.”<\/p>\n

\"15NASCARIndySprintCupKyleBuschLeadingField\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tony Stewart spent the early portion of the race near the front, finished in 28th position, one spot behind teammate, Danica Patrick.<\/p>\n

After Busch, Logano, and Harvick, the top five included Martin Truex, Jr. and Denny Hamlin in fifth.\u00a0 Rounding out the top 10 was Clint Bowyer, Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski.<\/p>\n

Busch won with an average speed of 131.656 mph.\u00a0 There were 16 lead changes among six drivers with nine caution flags for 36 laps.<\/p>\n

The Sprint Cup series now goes to the Pocono Mountains for the Windows 10 400 next weekend at the Pocono Raceway on Sunday, August 2, at 1 p.m. EDT on NBCSN.<\/p>\n

\"NASCAR<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kyle Busch has one of his strongest performances to date and takes the win at the Crown Royal 400.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":16995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3424,3470,22],"tags":[3053,2993,3054,1531,955,1190,1529,1193,1528,2844,682,683,2849,3115,127,1192],"class_list":["post-16993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","category-news","category-event-coverage","tag-brad-keselowski","tag-clint-bowyer","tag-danica-patrick","tag-denny-hamlin","tag-indianapolis-motor-speedway","tag-jeff-gordon","tag-joey-logano","tag-kasey-kahne","tag-kevin-harvick","tag-kurt-busch","tag-kyle-busch","tag-kyle-larson","tag-martin-truex-jr","tag-matt-kenseth","tag-nascar","tag-tony-stewart"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/15NASCARIndySprintCupKyleBuschCelebrating.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-4q5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16993"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17019,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16993\/revisions\/17019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}