7/14/08
Yet another winning weekend for Kyle Busch! The driver of the No. 18 M&M’s Toyota, led the three-car Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) contingent at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., by winning Saturday night’s LifeLock.com 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race. It was his second straight Sprint Cup victory, his third in the last four races, his seventh this season and his 11th in 133 career Sprint Cup races.
Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 20 Home Depot Toyota for JGR, finished fifth. In eight career Sprint Cup races at Chicagoland, Stewart has finished outside the top-five on only two occasions.
Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 FedEx Express Toyota for JGR, finished a disappointing 40th as he dealt with electrical issues during the early part of the race.
Busch remains the lead JGR driver in the championship point race. He continues to be the series’ point leader, and extended his lead to an impressive 262 markers over second-place Dale Earnhardt Jr. Stewart and Hamlin occupy the 10th and 12th slots, respectively. Stewart gained two positions while Hamlin dropped five spots. Stewart is 576 points behind Busch while Hamlin sits 598 points arrears Busch.
Finishing second to Busch in the LifeLock.com 400 by .159 of a second was Jimmie Johnson. Kevin Harvick finished third, while Greg Biffle and Stewart rounded out the top-five. Brian Vickers, Matt Kenseth, David Ragan, Martin Truex Jr., and Ryan Newman comprised the remainder of the top-10.
There were nine caution periods for 33 laps, with two drivers failing to finish the 267-lap race.
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Kyle Busch also had another winning victory in the No. 18 Z-Line Designs/OfficeMax Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), in Friday night’s Dollar General 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Chicagoland. He led the contest twice for a race-high 101 laps en route to his fifth series win of the season.
The win was the fourth of the season for the No. 18 team, and it was also the 13th win of the season for JGR, tying the Nationwide Series record for most wins by a single organization. The previous record was set last year by Richard Childress Racing (RCR) via drivers Kevin Harvick (six wins), Jeff Burton (five wins) and Clint Bowyer (two wins), who accomplished the feat driving the Nos. 21, 29 and 2 Nationwide Series entries. RCR’s record-setting 13th win came in the season’s 35th and final race at Homestead (Fla.) Miami Speedway with Burton in the No. 29.
JGR’s record-tying win came in just the 20th race of this year’s 35-race schedule.
Busch started the 200-lap affair in 10th and quickly moved up to fifth-place by just the ninth circuit around the 1.5-mile oval, where he stayed until first pit stop of the day on lap 54. The talented 23-year old continued to hang in and around the top-five until a caution brought him into the pits on lap 90, where crew chief Jason Ratcliff made an air pressure change and a track bar adjustment to fix a tight handling condition in the center of the corner. After a strong stop by the Z-Line Designs crew that helped Busch restart the race in third, the change appeared to be just what the doctor ordered, as Busch vaulted into the lead on lap 94 and never looked back.
JGR has now led 1,781 of 3,644 (48.8 percent) of the laps run in Nationwide Series competition this season, and has won 13 out of the 20 races contested so far this season with four different drivers – Busch, Stewart, Hamlin and 18-year-old phenom Joey Logano.
The win helped catapult Busch, who’s running a part-time Nationwide Series schedule, up two spots to fifth in the championship driver standings. And it moved the No. 18 car, which is also running a partial schedule this season, up four spots to 26th in the series’ owner standings.
There were three caution periods for 15 laps, with 10 drivers failing to finish the event.
Hamlin, driving for Braun Racing, finished 3.120 seconds behind Busch in the runner-up slot, while Brad Keselowski, Brian Vickers, and David Reutimann secured the rest of the top-five. Greg Biffle, Bowyer, Burton, Stewart and rookie Landon Cassill comprised the remainder of the top-10.