Kurt Busch Wins A Wild One In Atlanta
Kasey Kahne and crew chief Kenny Francis chatted on pit road before Sunday's race in Atlanta. The led the most laps but finished fourth. (Photo courtesy of NASCAR)
RacinToday.com
Kurt Busch repeated as winner of the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday, but he had to survive a wild, two green/white/checkered-restart finish to do it.
The victory was the 21st for Busch, whose last previous victory came at Texas Motor Speedway – like Atlanta, a quadoval – last fall.
Busch took the lead on the first of the G/W/C restarts when he split front-row drivers Clint Bowyer and Paul Menard.
Just after taking the lead, the yellow flag waved again as a big wreck broke out just behind the leaders.
On the second restart, Busch got away clean and won by .4 seconds.
The first green/which/checkered was caused by a wreck which saw the car of Brad Keselowski get airborne and and then upside down. It brought out the yellow with three laps to go.
The wreck occurred when Carl Edwards bumped Keselowski, who had bumped Edwards early in the race, from behind. Keselowki was running top 10 at the time and Edwards was over 150 laps off the pace.
After the wreck, NASCAR officials parked Edwards.
Matt Kenseth finished second and Juan Pablo Montoya third.
Kasey Kahne, who finished fourth, dominated large portions of the race and led a day’s best 143 laps.
Kevin Harvick finished ninth and retrained his points lead. He will head into the off season up 26 on Greg Biffle.
Jimmie Johnson, who was on a two-race winning streak and is attempting to win his fifth-straight championship, finished 12th.
(This story will be updated shortly)
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