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Kyle Busch makes it two straight NASCAR wins this weekend at Phoenix

Nov 11, 2007 - 1:24 AM By Bruce Martin PA SportsTicker Contributing Editor

AVONDALE, Arizona (Ticker) -- Kyle Busch won his second NASCAR race at Phoenix International Raceway in as many days Saturday, winning the Busch Arizona Travel 200.

Busch, who also won Friday night's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, will go for something that's never been accomplished before if he can make it three straight with a win in Sunday's Nextel Cup Checker Auto Parts 500.

No driver has ever won all three of NASCAR's major national touring series at the same track on the same weekend. Greg Biffle won both the NCTS and Busch races at Phoenix in 2001.

Busch on Saturday won his last Busch race for Hendrick Motorsports.

"It means a lot to get my start with Hendrick Motorsports and go out winning my last race for them in the Busch Series," said Busch, who leaves for Joe Gibbs Racing at the end of the season. "We came up a little short for the Busch Series championship in 2004 but winning is always fun."

It was the 11th Busch Series win of the season and his first victory and third top-10 finish in five races at PIR.

Busch's Chevrolet was cruising to victory before a four-car crash on the frontstretch that involved Indianapolis 500 winner Dario Franchitti, David Ragan, Stanton Barrett and Richard Johns that brought out the second red flag of the race, stopping it with seven laps left.

The flag was pulled 11 minutes and 15 seconds later, setting up a green-white-checkered finish.

When the green flag waved, Busch floored the accelerator and his Chevy sped away from Matt Kenseth's Ford. He won the race by 0.305-seconds.

Kenseth drove much of the race without his power-steering, making it difficult to turn the car, but his car failed the post-race inspection because his right-rear was too high. It would have been his seventh second-place finish this season.

"The long green run was real bad but on the 15-lap run toward the end, it didn't make a difference," Kenseth said. "We were a little bit off of Kyle and in the long run we were closer to him than the short run.

"I need somebody's trainer," Kenseth said. "Obviously, we have some good ones at Roush. It wasn't really that bad, physically not that hard to turn and it was hard to feel the front tires. It was tough for that and tough to catch the car. If you build a car with manual steering it's not hard to steer because they are built for that. But when you have power steering and you lose it, it's 10-times harder that that."

Clint Bowyer's Chevrolet was third followed by Scott Wimmer's Chevy and Kevin Harvick's Chevrolet.

"I'm frustrated but when you are frustrated with third, life isn't all that bad," Bowyer said. "It was wild, a lot of cautions but that's the nature of the beast any more. I was looking forward to this race for quite some time and I expected to win but it just wasn't our day.

"It's a good race car. We were too tight and just missed it a little bit. Kyle was pretty good. We were off. He was really good but we were definitely off. I was hoping Matt would get up there and crash him and let us win but he didn't do it."

Shortly after winning the race, Busch flew to Las Vegas to run a Late Model race in his hometown, a move that impressed the weary Kenseth.

"I start thinking of him being 13 years younger than me because 13 years ago, I would have loved it," Kenseth said. "I'm going home to go to bed early tonight."

There were 10 lead changes among seven drivers and 11 cautions for 46 laps. Busch won the race at an average speed of 89.111 miles per hour.

Carl Edwards, the 2007 Busch Series champion, finished seventh in a Ford.

Busch led three times for 132 laps in the 203-lap contest.

Richard Childress retained the lead in the car owner's championship, leading Joe Gibbs by 194 points. Childress only needs to have his car No. 29 start the race to clinch the owner's championship next week at Homestead-Miami Speedway.