Kyle Busch finishes historic weekend with win at the Brickyard
Kyle Busch started the NASCAR Xfinity Series race and Sprint Cup race this weekend from pole, and made history by winning both of them.
On a blistering day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway where temperatures reached well over 30 degrees Celsius, no one was hotter than Kyle Busch.
The reigning Sprint Cup champion led 149 of the 170 laps to win the Crown Royal Presents the Combat Wounded Coalition 400 at the Brickyard.
It is the fourth Sprint Cup victory this season for Busch, and his 38th career win.
Busch won the race from pole position, giving him an historic weekend double, as he also won Saturday's Xfnity Series race from first.
No driver in NASCAR history had ever achieved that feat at any track.
Busch did not just win the race Sunday, he dominated, holding leads of several seconds for much of the event.
There were six crashes in the final 21 laps, leading to two overtime restarts. That gave Busch's competitors six chances to get by him, six chances for him to miss his mark and make a mistake.
But Busch held on following every restart, pulling away from the rest of the field.
"I felt like the more restarts we had, the tougher it would be on us," team owner Joe Gibbs told NBCSN after the race.
And as the race went on past the scheduled 400-mile distance, Busch's JGR team and others began to worry about whether they would have enough fuel to go the distance.
As it turned out, Busch had plenty of fuel to finish off his historic weekend at Indy.
"I certainly had hoped [the car] would be like that, that awesome," Busch told NBCSN after the race. "This Toyota was awesome… not even some of my team-mates could challenge us.
"It's just fun to come out here and have such a dominant piece."
Matt Kenseth came in behind Busch in second, with Jimmie Johnson completing the podium. Denny Hamlin (fourth) and Kyle Larson (fifth) rounded out the top five.