By Aaron Bearden, Motorsports Editor
BRISTOL, Tenn. — Post-race review and analysis from the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Who Won?
Kurt Busch. The veteran passed Clint Bowyer on the penultimate restart and held off a late charge from Kyle Larson after the final one to score his first win of the 2018 season.
Who Claimed the Stages?
Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano. The Bristol Night Race proved to be an event rife with parity, with contenders ebbing and flowing through the field over the course of the race’s 500 laps. Blaney and Logano claimed stage wins, but neither were a major factor in the battle for the race victory.
Top Stories
Kurt Busch keeps the family in victory lane
Given his history of frustration after disappointing finishes, it wouldn’t have been a shock to see Kyle Busch climb out of his battered No. 18 Toyota despondent and distant. The disappointment was there.
But when he looked to the frontstretch, the 2015 Cup champ cracked a wry smile.
Kyle had fallen short of victory lane, a two-lap comeback after a Lap 2 crash undone by fueling issues and late contact with Chris Buescher that resulted in a flat tire.
He’d finished 20th, a result that befitted the look of his No. 18, but failed to showcase the raw speed it had.
Taking his place in victory lane was his older brother Kurt.
Kurt Busch surged to the lead on a Lap 478 restart, held serve when the field underwent another restart on Lap 488 and kept Friday’s Xfinity Series winner Kyle Larson at bay to secure his first win since the 2017 Daytona 500.
That made Kyle smile, and laugh a bit after Kurt committed one of the funnier mistakes in recent NASCAR history – leaving his helmet on top of his No. 41 Ford as he drove to victory lane.
“Congratulations to Kurt, that’s cool,” Kyle said. “But he just forget his helmet on his roof and chunked his helmet. I have something else for him, I’ll tell him in private.”
The elder Busch brother can be forgiven for making such a silly gaffe. He was out of practice when it came to celebrating wins.
Saturday’s victory was Kurt’s first since the 2017 Daytona 500 – a winless streak of 55 races, during which his younger brother had triumphed 11 times. It was also the first win for the majority of his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing team, including crew chief Billy Scott.
Given the combination of those two factors, as well as the fact that it was his 30th triumph, Saturday’s win held a special place in Busch’s list of triumphs.
“Winning is great, any time, no matter how long there was in between,” Busch said. “The motivation is always there.
“To have a group of guys like Billy, so many first‑time winners on this crew of the 41 car. I remember winning my first race here at Bristol. We all got special rings. I’m going to get all the guys rings on their first win. It’s big.”
Kyle’s chaotic drive
By comparison Kyle’s night ended up much worse, but his race was arguably the biggest storyline of the entire evening.
The Nevadan entered the race just a day removed from a squandered run in the Xfinity Series. Kyle had what appeared to be the dominant car early in that event, driving out to a six-second lead and lapping up to 12th in the opening stage. But a mistake during the latter stages of the stage resulted in a cut tire on Busch’s No. 18, knocking him out of the race in 36th.
Friday had seen a rare misstep from Kyle on the half-mile Bristol oval, but the Joe Gibbs Racing ace entered Saturday’s Cup race with the same swagger he traditionally shows. He walked out to DJ Khaled’s “All I Do is Win” during Bristol’s traditional driver introductions, playing to the crowd before claiming he needed no introduction amid a cascade of boos.
That confidence would last all of two laps in the race. Busch made contact with Aric Almirola on the opening circuit, and subsequently spun out on Lap 2, inciting a multi-car accident that eliminated Gray Gaulding, A.J. Allmendinger, Darrell Wallace Jr. and Michael McDowell before they had a legitimate chance to compete.
The crash resulted in heavy damage for Busch’s No. 18 Toyota, and the repairs required from the team left Busch two laps down. Some even questioned the legality of his machine because it was missing a rear bumper, though ESPN’s Bob Pockrass found the section of the rulebook that proved the car was legal.
It looked like his race might be over, but here’s the thing — Busch was actually quicker than the leaders despite his damage.
Moving forward proved difficult, and an ill-timed stop nearly trapped Busch a third lap down at one point. But through a combination of crashes and stage cautions Busch was able to work his way back to the lead lap.
From there the 33-year-old was free to contend for the win, though a significant flaw with his damage machine hindered his ability to maintain track position. The bent sheet metal made it difficult for Busch’s crew to refuel his machine, leading to lengthy stops that cost the Nevadan spots each time he dove to the pit lane.
That left Busch battling his way forward on each run, but the defending Bristol Night Race winner still marched on, entering the top five in the race’s final 100 laps.
Then came another mistake.
Busch was battling Big Three rival Martin Truex Jr. for second on Lap 430 when he misjudged his position relative to the defending champion. Busch attempted to jump in line behind Truex, but made contact with the left-rear quarter panel of the No. 78 Toyota.
Truex was sent spinning into the inside wall from the contact before being plowed into by the lapped car of JJ Yeley. The damage eliminated the New Jersey native from the race, leaving him throwing equipment and kicking his car in frustration while longtime girlfriend Sherry Pollex tweeted that Busch was “a moron.”
Busch took blame for the crash after the race, saying it “was just a misjudgment on my behalf, I crashed the (No.) 78 so that was my bad totally. Totally misjudged that one just coming off the corner and knowing there was still plenty of laps left, I wasn’t even in a hurry and I just misjudged it by four or six inches, whatever it was and I clipped him there and sent him for a ride.”
Truex didn’t call out his Toyota teammate afterward, but instead claimed his frustration stemmed from his poor recent luck at Bristol.
“This place has been so hard on us,” Truex said. “I mean I can’t even explain it to you how good we’ve run here in the past three or four years and crap like this every single time. It’s like just one thing after another. Sucks that it happened, but at the end of the day it’s racing at Bristol.”
Busch rallied once more to contend for a top five after his incident with Truex, but a late decision to pit for tires left the Nevadan mired in the pack when the field began to stack up. He was on the outside of a three-wide battle with Buescher and Jimmie Johnson when contact between the trio left Busch was a cut tire.
A subsequent spin brought out another yellow on Lap 483, and resulted in the 20th-place disappointment for Busch at race’s end.
“Maybe if we would have stayed out, Monday morning quarterback, if we would have stayed out, we would have inherited the fourth starting position on that restart and been ahead of all that” Busch said. “Ifs, ands or buts, we should have never been in that position with how torn up this race car was.
“We probably finished where we should have, but we had a shot anyways.”
Paired with an unfortunate decision from a fan to confront Busch after the race, Saturday’s chaotic affair at Bristol is one that the veteran will likely be eager to move on from.
Playoff Storylines
In many ways Saturday’s Bristol race felt like an ode to the days of old at the Last Great Coliseum. Teams weren’t glued to the bottom for the entire event like they’d seen in races on the oval a decade ago, but the contact, lapped traffic struggles and high emotions of that era were all on display.
The throwback style went as deep as the race winner, with Kurt Busch rekindling his performance level of the mid-2000s – where he earned five Bristol victories in the span of five seasons – to earn his first win at Thunder Valley since 2006.
“I’ll tell you, this track brings out the best in everybody,” Busch said afterward. “Just to come here, to feel that Saturday night atmosphere, racing under the lights, it brings you back to the roots.”
One other old-school factor also creeped in at Bristol, particularly toward the end when it became obvious that there wouldn’t be a surprise winner – points racing.
In the midst of a regular season with a clearly-established hierarchy in the standings, the push towards the coming postseason has been defined by the Big Three’s dominance and relative lack of drama regarding the field of 16.
Busch, Truex and Kevin Harvick have imposed their will on the rest of the field this season, winning a combined 17 races and 24 stages in the year’s opening 24 races. Their dominance has had two significant effects on the rest of the field.
The most obvious change to come of it has been the emphasis on points racing for the final playoff spots.
In the past couple seasons, there have been a host of surprise winners from outside of the top 16 in the standings, resulting in a shuffling of the playoff grid. Drivers like Tony Stewart, Chris Buescher, Austin Dillon and Kasey Kahne have stolen away positions on points, stopping others like Joey Logano and Clint Bowyer from earning postseason berths.
This season has been drastically different. Only one victory – Dillon’s triumph in the season-opening Daytona 500 – has come from a driver outside of the top 16. A few others have come close, with Daniel Suarez’s second-place run at Pocono Raceway the most recent example, but the battle for the final playoff berths have ultimately come down to points racing.
And the thing is, it hasn’t been much of a battle at all.
The summer struggles of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Paul Menard have allowed Alex Bowman to stretch out to a comfortable 79-point advantage on the playoff bubble as the postseason nears.
While Bowman won’t rest easy until the playoffs are finally set in stone, the drivers above him are sitting pretty to secure postseason bids already, with significant advantages over the Hendrick Motorsports driver.
Nine drivers have clinched a playoff berth with a win. Ryan Blaney, Brad Keselowski and Kyle Larson have already secured playoff spots on points, and the duo of Denny Hamlin and Aric Almirola are in position to do the same next weekend at Darlington Raceway if there isn’t a shock winner.
Only Jimmie Johnson is in any real danger of elimination, and he has a 32-point edge on Bowman for the last spot if someone surprising pulls into victory lane. That could happen in the final two races of the regular season. But the trends of the season indicate that it won’t.
So what is there to race for?
It’s simple for those outside of the top three – playoff points.
If the regular season were to end today, Busch and Harvick would enter the postseason with 50 playoff points apiece. Truex would follow in third with 35 points of his own.
The next highest total would go to Bowyer with 16 – less than half of the Big Three’s worst driver.
With that sort of advantage, the sport’s top trio have established themselves as virtual locks to make deep playoff runs. If they can avoid issues or surprise winners in the Round of 8, they’ll likely all advance straight to Homestead-Miami Speedway.
That means the other 13 drivers are likely competing for one spot, which makes their position entering the playoffs important.
Bowyer’s been the best of the rest this regular season, securing two wins and 10 guaranteed playoff points, but Bristol winner Kurt Busch has been right there with his Stewart-Haas Racing teammate.
The inaugural Chase winner actually sits fourth in the standings with two races remaining in the regular season. Thanks to his symbolic late overtake of Bowyer, Busch also has seven guaranteed playoff points to accompany whatever bonus points he gets for his regular season position.
That would put Busch fifth at the start of the playoffs if they were to start today. He’d enter with 14 total playoff points, just two behind Bowyer with everything to race for. Logano would start just behind Busch with 13, but no one else is currently set to start the postseason with 10 or more playoff points.
That leaves the majority of the sport’s top 13 grouped tightly together, which means there will be little margin for error for the final spot.
In the end the final Championship 4 spot is likely to come down to which remaining driver can pull off a victory in the Round of 8, similar to the playoffs runs of Johnson and Harvick in the past two seasons after quiet years. A driver from the Big Three could even be knocked out if there were two surprise winners.
But if no one proves capable of overcoming Busch, Harvick and Truex in the round, then playoff points and minimized mistakes are likely to be the calling card for the Championship 4’s dark horse.
Given the relative lack of drama related to the rest of the playoffs, don’t be surprised if this become a major talking point as the season marches on.
Other Notes
- He didn’t get the finish to show for it, but Chris Buescher was a consistent contender in the top 10 throughout the day for JTG Daugherty Racing. The Texan’s day was only undone late when his team left him out on old tires in a late hail mary bid for a playoff-clinching win. He was involved in the contact that led to Kyle Busch’s final crash, resulting in a 19th-place finish.
- In the midst of his retirement announcement, Kasey Kahne delivered one of the better runs of his final full-time season. The Washington native survived to the finish with a damaged No. 95 Chevrolet to give Leavine Family Racing their second top 15 of the year entering the final off-week of the season.
- The bottom lane lane struggled on restarts once again on Saturday, a disadvantage that left drivers braking on pit road in an attempt to secure an even restart position. That incited a proposal from veteran Denny Hamlin – allowing drivers to choose their lane on restarts.
- NASCAR’s decision to move Saturday’s race up an hour due to inclement weather appears to have been the correct one. Scattered storms threatened to postpone the race throughout the day, and a heavy shower passed over the track two hours before the event. But in the end the field were able to start at the scheduled time and completed all 500 laps roughly 40 minutes before another rain storm hit the track.
Bearden Breakdown: Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race
By Aaron Bearden, Motorsports Editor
BRISTOL, Tenn. — Post-race review and analysis from the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Who Won?
Kurt Busch. The veteran passed Clint Bowyer on the penultimate restart and held off a late charge from Kyle Larson after the final one to score his first win of the 2018 season.
Who Claimed the Stages?
Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano. The Bristol Night Race proved to be an event rife with parity, with contenders ebbing and flowing through the field over the course of the race’s 500 laps. Blaney and Logano claimed stage wins, but neither were a major factor in the battle for the race victory.
Top Stories
Kurt Busch keeps the family in victory lane
Given his history of frustration after disappointing finishes, it wouldn’t have been a shock to see Kyle Busch climb out of his battered No. 18 Toyota despondent and distant. The disappointment was there.
But when he looked to the frontstretch, the 2015 Cup champ cracked a wry smile.
Kyle had fallen short of victory lane, a two-lap comeback after a Lap 2 crash undone by fueling issues and late contact with Chris Buescher that resulted in a flat tire.
He’d finished 20th, a result that befitted the look of his No. 18, but failed to showcase the raw speed it had.
Taking his place in victory lane was his older brother Kurt.
Kurt Busch surged to the lead on a Lap 478 restart, held serve when the field underwent another restart on Lap 488 and kept Friday’s Xfinity Series winner Kyle Larson at bay to secure his first win since the 2017 Daytona 500.
That made Kyle smile, and laugh a bit after Kurt committed one of the funnier mistakes in recent NASCAR history – leaving his helmet on top of his No. 41 Ford as he drove to victory lane.
“Congratulations to Kurt, that’s cool,” Kyle said. “But he just forget his helmet on his roof and chunked his helmet. I have something else for him, I’ll tell him in private.”
The elder Busch brother can be forgiven for making such a silly gaffe. He was out of practice when it came to celebrating wins.
Saturday’s victory was Kurt’s first since the 2017 Daytona 500 – a winless streak of 55 races, during which his younger brother had triumphed 11 times. It was also the first win for the majority of his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing team, including crew chief Billy Scott.
Given the combination of those two factors, as well as the fact that it was his 30th triumph, Saturday’s win held a special place in Busch’s list of triumphs.
“Winning is great, any time, no matter how long there was in between,” Busch said. “The motivation is always there.
“To have a group of guys like Billy, so many first‑time winners on this crew of the 41 car. I remember winning my first race here at Bristol. We all got special rings. I’m going to get all the guys rings on their first win. It’s big.”
Kyle’s chaotic drive
By comparison Kyle’s night ended up much worse, but his race was arguably the biggest storyline of the entire evening.
The Nevadan entered the race just a day removed from a squandered run in the Xfinity Series. Kyle had what appeared to be the dominant car early in that event, driving out to a six-second lead and lapping up to 12th in the opening stage. But a mistake during the latter stages of the stage resulted in a cut tire on Busch’s No. 18, knocking him out of the race in 36th.
Friday had seen a rare misstep from Kyle on the half-mile Bristol oval, but the Joe Gibbs Racing ace entered Saturday’s Cup race with the same swagger he traditionally shows. He walked out to DJ Khaled’s “All I Do is Win” during Bristol’s traditional driver introductions, playing to the crowd before claiming he needed no introduction amid a cascade of boos.
That confidence would last all of two laps in the race. Busch made contact with Aric Almirola on the opening circuit, and subsequently spun out on Lap 2, inciting a multi-car accident that eliminated Gray Gaulding, A.J. Allmendinger, Darrell Wallace Jr. and Michael McDowell before they had a legitimate chance to compete.
The crash resulted in heavy damage for Busch’s No. 18 Toyota, and the repairs required from the team left Busch two laps down. Some even questioned the legality of his machine because it was missing a rear bumper, though ESPN’s Bob Pockrass found the section of the rulebook that proved the car was legal.
It looked like his race might be over, but here’s the thing — Busch was actually quicker than the leaders despite his damage.
Moving forward proved difficult, and an ill-timed stop nearly trapped Busch a third lap down at one point. But through a combination of crashes and stage cautions Busch was able to work his way back to the lead lap.
From there the 33-year-old was free to contend for the win, though a significant flaw with his damage machine hindered his ability to maintain track position. The bent sheet metal made it difficult for Busch’s crew to refuel his machine, leading to lengthy stops that cost the Nevadan spots each time he dove to the pit lane.
That left Busch battling his way forward on each run, but the defending Bristol Night Race winner still marched on, entering the top five in the race’s final 100 laps.
Then came another mistake.
Busch was battling Big Three rival Martin Truex Jr. for second on Lap 430 when he misjudged his position relative to the defending champion. Busch attempted to jump in line behind Truex, but made contact with the left-rear quarter panel of the No. 78 Toyota.
Truex was sent spinning into the inside wall from the contact before being plowed into by the lapped car of JJ Yeley. The damage eliminated the New Jersey native from the race, leaving him throwing equipment and kicking his car in frustration while longtime girlfriend Sherry Pollex tweeted that Busch was “a moron.”
Busch took blame for the crash after the race, saying it “was just a misjudgment on my behalf, I crashed the (No.) 78 so that was my bad totally. Totally misjudged that one just coming off the corner and knowing there was still plenty of laps left, I wasn’t even in a hurry and I just misjudged it by four or six inches, whatever it was and I clipped him there and sent him for a ride.”
Truex didn’t call out his Toyota teammate afterward, but instead claimed his frustration stemmed from his poor recent luck at Bristol.
“This place has been so hard on us,” Truex said. “I mean I can’t even explain it to you how good we’ve run here in the past three or four years and crap like this every single time. It’s like just one thing after another. Sucks that it happened, but at the end of the day it’s racing at Bristol.”
Busch rallied once more to contend for a top five after his incident with Truex, but a late decision to pit for tires left the Nevadan mired in the pack when the field began to stack up. He was on the outside of a three-wide battle with Buescher and Jimmie Johnson when contact between the trio left Busch was a cut tire.
A subsequent spin brought out another yellow on Lap 483, and resulted in the 20th-place disappointment for Busch at race’s end.
“Maybe if we would have stayed out, Monday morning quarterback, if we would have stayed out, we would have inherited the fourth starting position on that restart and been ahead of all that” Busch said. “Ifs, ands or buts, we should have never been in that position with how torn up this race car was.
“We probably finished where we should have, but we had a shot anyways.”
Paired with an unfortunate decision from a fan to confront Busch after the race, Saturday’s chaotic affair at Bristol is one that the veteran will likely be eager to move on from.
Playoff Storylines
In many ways Saturday’s Bristol race felt like an ode to the days of old at the Last Great Coliseum. Teams weren’t glued to the bottom for the entire event like they’d seen in races on the oval a decade ago, but the contact, lapped traffic struggles and high emotions of that era were all on display.
The throwback style went as deep as the race winner, with Kurt Busch rekindling his performance level of the mid-2000s – where he earned five Bristol victories in the span of five seasons – to earn his first win at Thunder Valley since 2006.
“I’ll tell you, this track brings out the best in everybody,” Busch said afterward. “Just to come here, to feel that Saturday night atmosphere, racing under the lights, it brings you back to the roots.”
One other old-school factor also creeped in at Bristol, particularly toward the end when it became obvious that there wouldn’t be a surprise winner – points racing.
In the midst of a regular season with a clearly-established hierarchy in the standings, the push towards the coming postseason has been defined by the Big Three’s dominance and relative lack of drama regarding the field of 16.
Busch, Truex and Kevin Harvick have imposed their will on the rest of the field this season, winning a combined 17 races and 24 stages in the year’s opening 24 races. Their dominance has had two significant effects on the rest of the field.
The most obvious change to come of it has been the emphasis on points racing for the final playoff spots.
In the past couple seasons, there have been a host of surprise winners from outside of the top 16 in the standings, resulting in a shuffling of the playoff grid. Drivers like Tony Stewart, Chris Buescher, Austin Dillon and Kasey Kahne have stolen away positions on points, stopping others like Joey Logano and Clint Bowyer from earning postseason berths.
This season has been drastically different. Only one victory – Dillon’s triumph in the season-opening Daytona 500 – has come from a driver outside of the top 16. A few others have come close, with Daniel Suarez’s second-place run at Pocono Raceway the most recent example, but the battle for the final playoff berths have ultimately come down to points racing.
And the thing is, it hasn’t been much of a battle at all.
The summer struggles of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Paul Menard have allowed Alex Bowman to stretch out to a comfortable 79-point advantage on the playoff bubble as the postseason nears.
While Bowman won’t rest easy until the playoffs are finally set in stone, the drivers above him are sitting pretty to secure postseason bids already, with significant advantages over the Hendrick Motorsports driver.
Nine drivers have clinched a playoff berth with a win. Ryan Blaney, Brad Keselowski and Kyle Larson have already secured playoff spots on points, and the duo of Denny Hamlin and Aric Almirola are in position to do the same next weekend at Darlington Raceway if there isn’t a shock winner.
Only Jimmie Johnson is in any real danger of elimination, and he has a 32-point edge on Bowman for the last spot if someone surprising pulls into victory lane. That could happen in the final two races of the regular season. But the trends of the season indicate that it won’t.
So what is there to race for?
It’s simple for those outside of the top three – playoff points.
If the regular season were to end today, Busch and Harvick would enter the postseason with 50 playoff points apiece. Truex would follow in third with 35 points of his own.
The next highest total would go to Bowyer with 16 – less than half of the Big Three’s worst driver.
With that sort of advantage, the sport’s top trio have established themselves as virtual locks to make deep playoff runs. If they can avoid issues or surprise winners in the Round of 8, they’ll likely all advance straight to Homestead-Miami Speedway.
That means the other 13 drivers are likely competing for one spot, which makes their position entering the playoffs important.
Bowyer’s been the best of the rest this regular season, securing two wins and 10 guaranteed playoff points, but Bristol winner Kurt Busch has been right there with his Stewart-Haas Racing teammate.
The inaugural Chase winner actually sits fourth in the standings with two races remaining in the regular season. Thanks to his symbolic late overtake of Bowyer, Busch also has seven guaranteed playoff points to accompany whatever bonus points he gets for his regular season position.
That would put Busch fifth at the start of the playoffs if they were to start today. He’d enter with 14 total playoff points, just two behind Bowyer with everything to race for. Logano would start just behind Busch with 13, but no one else is currently set to start the postseason with 10 or more playoff points.
That leaves the majority of the sport’s top 13 grouped tightly together, which means there will be little margin for error for the final spot.
In the end the final Championship 4 spot is likely to come down to which remaining driver can pull off a victory in the Round of 8, similar to the playoffs runs of Johnson and Harvick in the past two seasons after quiet years. A driver from the Big Three could even be knocked out if there were two surprise winners.
But if no one proves capable of overcoming Busch, Harvick and Truex in the round, then playoff points and minimized mistakes are likely to be the calling card for the Championship 4’s dark horse.
Given the relative lack of drama related to the rest of the playoffs, don’t be surprised if this become a major talking point as the season marches on.
Other Notes