(NASCAR)—Kyle Bush got to the finish line seven-tenths of a second ahead of brother Kurt at Bristol to claim his eighth victory on the old track, the most of any active driver.
The record for Bristol wins is held by Darrell Waltrip, who announced this week that he’s retiring from the FOX broadcast booth after nineteen years.
“It ain’t twelve, that’s for sure,” said Bush, “So I got more to go. But we’re getting there…There’s a lot of years left.”
The brothers started side by side on the front row on the last restart, but older brother Kurt couldn’t reel in the younger Bush during the last eleven laps. Both had decided to stay on the track while other competitors, notably Penske teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano who were running 1-2 at the time, pitted for new tires for the final run.
Kyle Busch was involved in a multi-car crash on lap two, but rallied to take his first lead on lap 34 of the 500-lap race.
Sunrise Beach driver Clint Bowyer ran into “crummy luck” late in the race as he and Joey Logano (in 22) battled for position and their cars touched coming out of the fourth turn with 69 laps left. The contact tore the valve stem out of Bowyer’s right front tire, causing him to brush the wall. Bowyer came back to finish seventh. His third straight top ten finish, fourth of the year in eight races. Bowyer led 24 laps but he described the finish as “terribly disappointing.”
NASCAR moves to Richmond next week. Bowyer won there in 2008.
(INDYCAR)—Takuma Sato had them all covered at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama. Sato started from the pole for Rahal Letterman (yes, that Letterman) Lanigan Racing and finished about 2.4 seconds ahead of five-time series champion Scott Dixon, who has finished second six times at the track without a win.
Sato (shown at last year’s race near St. Louis) had driven nine races at Barber and never finished higher than eighth. He’s the fifth driver to win the pole there and the third different driver to win in the first three races of the year. The win moves him to third in the points standings, trailing leader Josef Newgarden and Dixon.
IndyCar runs on the streets of Long Beach next weekend before heading to Indianapolis where the series will run on the Speedway road course on May 11, and run the 103rd Indianapolis 500 on Memorial Day weekend.
(FORMULA 1)—Formula One will be in Shanghai, China next weekend.
