The TV analysts were not the only ones vocal about Busch conserving fuel though.
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With three laps remaining in Sunday’s Windows 10 400, Logano, Busch and Truex occupied the top three spots, but the question remained whether the trio had saved enough fuel to fight for the win.
We would be celebrating a win and a Chase berth (had the fuel not run out). Coming into Pocono Busch had won four of the last five races and his confidence should have been at an all-time high. He returned in late May and has won three consecutive Sprint Cup Series races and four of the last five.
Busch missed the first 11 events on the Sprint Cup schedule and NASCAR gave him a waiver to qualify for the Chase based on certain performance requirements in the races he could run. “He wants to be there so much that, I don’t know if it’s osmosis or his luck, but it’s just rubbing off on us”.
“I knew we were going to have better fuel-mileage because they (Logano and Busch) were hauling”, Kenseth said. With two wins under his belt as the Chase for the Sprint Cup nears, the Cambridge, Wisc. native heads to this week’s Cheez-It 355 from Watkins Glen on quite a roll. But Kyle himself even said that he was too greedy, and decided to just go for it. So now Kyle is out of the top 30 and needs to get a pretty good finish at the next set of tracks to get back into Chase contention. So, I don’t know what the deal is right there and what happened.
“Kyle and I, we look at race cars and racing the same way”, Stevens said.
Behind Kenseth in second and third was Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski and Hendrick Motorsports’ Jeff Gordon.
Kenseth, the 2003 series champion from Cambridge, Wis., won for the first time at Pocono.
Xfinity: Ryan Blaney maintained his lead through a second green-white-checkered finish to win the U.S. Cellular 250 at Iowa Speedway in Newton for his first win of the season.
“We needed all those guys in front of us to run out of gas and have a good run and get a win there, but it didn’t happen today”, Biffle said. The wall was severely damaged and a red flag was called as crews fixed the wall. It also launched some pit crew helmets into the air, but no one was hurt.
When Keselowski stopped, he slid through his pit box and hit his jackman and a tire carrier, sending a tire flying to bring out another yellow on Lap 62.
One tire broke free and rolled down pit row a ways before stopping. “I won at Pocono”.
Based on his comments Friday, Busch welcomes all the variables NASCAR can throw at him and his team.
For his part, Hornish had been slammed into by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. on Lap 29. His Chevrolet spun dramatically down the track, pointing his auto straight at the retaining wall designed to protect pit road. With Pocono’s recent history, they were banking on one final caution within the final 37 laps.
The cautions slowed – or stopped – the race to such a crawl that it took an hour to complete the first 30 laps on the 2 1/2-mile track.
Reddick took the series points lead from Matt Crafton. His hauler was packed up and out of the property before the halfway mark of the race. Meaning, that they aren’t putting everything into these pre-Chase races, hoping that they leave a lot left, and don’t show all their cards. Dale Earnhardt Jr. swept both Pocono races a year ago….
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Beckman also received a 20-point bonus this weekend for setting the national elapsed-time record of 3.921 seconds.
