Kyle Busch's loss was Scott Wimmer's gain.
Busch dominated Saturday's Pepsi 300 at Nashville Superspeedway but lost control of his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota off Turn 4 after leading 125 of the first 162 laps.
That handed the lead to Richard Childress Racing's Clint Bowyer, but RCR teammate Wimmer passed Bowyer for the lead with 20 laps to go to notch his first win in nearly five years.
Wimmer is also the first non-NASCAR Sprint Cup driver to win a NASCAR Nationwide Series race this season and the first since Jason Leffler won at O'Reilly Raceway Park last July.
"Stepping down and running a partial schedule in the Nationwide Series is not what I want to be doing, but those are the cards that are dealt to me right now," Wimmer said. "I'm with a great team with Richard
Childress Racing and have great teammates. You can struggle in a single-car operation or a lower-budget team, but that's not where any driver wants to be.
"I'm just trying to do the best I can for Richard right now, and hopefully, it'll fall that someday I can get back to racing Nationwide full time or Sprint Cup full time. But right now, I'm having a good time."
RCR has won the last two Nationwide Series races and swept the top three positions in last weekend's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Bowyer finished second Saturday, with the third RCR driver, Stephen Leicht, finishing 12th.
Wimmer, who helped RCR's No. 29 Chevrolet team to the owners championship last year, was winless in his last 57 races in the series and last scored a win in the series July 26, 2003 at Pikes Peak International Raceway.
Behind Wimmer and Bowyer were Carl Edwards in third, Brad Keselowski in fourth and Kelly Bires in fifth.
Sixth through 10th were David Stremme, Denny Hamlin, Cale Gale, David Reutimann and Nashville native Bobby Hamilton Jr.
Reutimann was running third when he had to pit for fuel with eight laps remaining. Wimmer, too, was close on gas, as his engine sputtered while he did celebratory burnouts.
"Extremely close," Wimmer's crew chief, Pat Smith, said. "We knew when that last caution came out, immediately when we went back [to green], I told Scott to start saving fuel then because I knew there was a chance [we were going to run out]. We were three laps short."
Busch led the first 61 laps after winning the pole by more than two-tenths of a second earlier in the day.
He lost the lead in the pits, with Bowyer's crew getting the No. 2 out first on Lap 62. Busch whipped into the lead two laps after the green flag waved, but Bowyer stayed with Busch and then passed him for the top spot on Lap 66.
Bowyer's Chevrolet was able to stay out front for 29 laps before Busch's car ran him back down, and he retook the lead on Lap 100.
Busch has now led 345 laps this season, yet is still without a victory.
"Just a stupid mistake on the driver's part," Busch said as he headed to his hauler.
btw sorry this is a little late Computer troubles
No comments:
Post a Comment