Kyle Busch led a race-high 149 of 170 laps en route to capturing his second consecutive weekend sweep at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with an overtime victory in the Crown Royal Presents the Combat Wounded Coalition 400 at The Brickyard on Sunday.
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Sunday’s race was also the final time that IN native Tony Stewart would run at Indianapolis.
“I didn’t expect it, ” said Busch about his dominance. “It’s cool to come here, sit on the pole, and then win the race; that’s just really special here at Indy”.
Try as he might to downplay it, this is not just another race or just another track for Stewart.
Fuel was a concern for the front four cars that last pitted with 47 laps remaining.
Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski were the only drivers who led laps in Sunday’s race.
But nobody was better than Busch this weekend. Straight up, no one had anything for Busch.
Jeff Gordon: Said restarts were a problem on his way to a 13th-place finish. “He takes every opportunity to race when he comes here”. George was voted into the chairman roles during Hulman & Co.’s annual meeting in March, but there was no public confirmation of the change until he was introduced as the IMS chairman over the Speedway’s public address system when he stepped out to give the command to start engines for Sunday’s race. He applauded crew chief Greg Ives for calling him in early to the pits at one point in the race, allowing them to make up track position and move into the top 15. “I didn’t want one, let alone five of them”. “When that caution came out with 10 or 11 to go, that was sort of the kick (in the butt) that we didn’t want to see”. “I feel really good about the things we learned [Friday] at the end of practice”, Gordon said. In 18 starts, he had the two wins, seven top-five finishes, a pole and 227 laps led.
Although he didn’t wind up with a storybook finish and a trip to Victory Lane, Stewart still relished his final Brickyard appearance.
“It really worked to our benefit”, he said. “We had a really good long-run auto till the end, so I felt like we’d be able to hold off all those guys behind us and then we had all those restarts”.
He’s trying to make sure it happens again.
“There’s some people out there that have expressed some interest to me, so we’ll see where things kind of go”, he said.
“I’ve never had a dominant auto like this”, Busch said after winning for the fourth time this season and sharing it with his wife and child.
Ryan Newman, a South Bend native, started sixth but finished 31st. Instead, Biffle’s day ended early after he crashed on Lap 52.
On his (supposed) last run at the Brickyard, Stewart finished 11th.
Martin Truex Jr. raced among the front runners all day and finished eighth while Austin Dillon and Paul Menard rounded out the top ten finishers.
Stewart headed into the pits after David Ragan caused a caution. Fought, got our lap back and we got something respectable out of it. Stewart faulted himself with the error but was able to get back onto the lead lap with 10 laps to go.
This, of course, is Stewart’s final season before retirement and Gordon came out of retirement to drive this week and next week in the place of his injured Hendrick Motorsports teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Though he is a member of the old guard and used to temperatures in the vehicle hotter than what he got on Sunday, Gordon had to battle the heat and said over the radio for his pit crew to dump water on him during a late pit stop.
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While fans and even media may have had difficulty adjusting to seeing Gordon working with a team other than his iconic No. 24, Gordon said working with a different team in a Cup race was probably the least of his issues this weekend.
