Kyle Busch won the Quaker State 400 Saturday night at Kentucky Speedway, taking another step toward what was once a seemingly unlikely bid to reach the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Busch ran down leader Joey Logano over the final 30 laps and following a spirited battle, completed the winning pass with 19 to go. Logano finished second, followed by Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth.
Joe Gibbs Racing fields the teams for Busch, Hamlin, Edwards and Kenseth, marking the first time the organization has placed all its cars inside the top five.
Brad Keselowski, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch completed the top 10 finishers.
The victory, Busch’s second in three races, moved him within 87 points of 30th-ranked Cole Whitt in the point standings. Because he missed the first 11 races of the season after breaking his right leg and left foot in a February accident at Daytona International Speedway, Busch needed a waiver to become to become Chase-eligible.
NASCAR granted the waiver, but required Busch to win a race and finish 30th or better in points. With eight regular season race remaining, he needs to average roughly a 17th-place finish to qualify. By leading a race-high 163 laps, Busch earned a max 48-points Saturday night.
“That right there is what we have to do — just to score as many points as we possibly can and score those wins,” Busch said. “That’s what’s going to get us where we need to be. We led the most laps and we won the race so that’s all you can score. We’ll just continue to push on and drive and try to strive through our deficit and get ourselves in position to be in the top-30.”
Kentucky was the debut of a new aerodynamic rules package NASCAR introduced to improve the quality of racing and increase passing. The modifications were designed to decrease downforce and saw a reduction of the rear spoiler and the front splitters expanded with the overhang trimmed to make the cars harder to control, placing more emphasis on a drivers’ ability.
The changes produced its intended effect. Saturday night’s race saw an increase of 2,665 green flag passes throughout the entire field, compared to 1,147 in last year’s event. Drivers wildly praised the new rules package afterward.
“When I was chasing Joey down, he moved up and tried to block my lane,” Busch said. “With the old package you get stalled out and get stuck behind the guy. I just moved down and went a little bit lower and got my car to stick and was able to power through and get back by him. We swapped the lead back and forth a couple times. I thought it was pretty good racing.”
Said Edwards: “This package, we need to keep going this direction. We could race closer together, I was steering right. We were using the whole car. We just need to keep taking downforce away. It was an awesome show. Just an awesome, fun day.”
