Strategy and little luck propel Busch into Victory Lane

Kurt Busch celebrated his first win of the season in a garage stall after rain shortened the LENOX Industrial Tools 301 17 laps from the finish on Sunday at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
 
Busch took the lead on lap 275 under a caution flag for a wreck involving Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jamie McMurray and David Ragan while the leaders decided to pit. Busch led a string of seven other lead-lap cars to stay on track and gamble on track position, knowing rain was in the area.

“I learned early on, before I even really made it up to the Cup level, that luck is definitely a player in racing,” Busch said. “It's something that's always been in the game. You've got to have strategy. You have to have a fast car. So we gambled a little bit and it paid off.
 
“We wanted to pit as soon as we could because we couldn’t make it on fuel,” he continued. “We were one of the front cars that pitted and so when you jump in that bed, you have to lay in it. And where we are in points, you need to take a little bit of a gamble. Pat (Tryson, crew chief) made a great call and we were able to get our Dodge in Victory Lane.”
 
A caution flag fell again on lap 281 after Clint Bowyer and Sam Hornish Jr. wrecked in Turn 3. Under the caution flag for the wreck, the skies opened up, forcing NASCAR to call the event a short time later, as New Hampshire does not have lighting. The race ended just before 5:30 pm EST.
 
Michael Waltrip and J.J. Yeley were also benefactors of the pit road strategy. Both drivers grabbed their best finishes of the season, finishing second and third.
 
Martin Truex Jr. and Elliott Sadler closed out the top 5. 
 
Busch led only 10 laps of the rain-shortened event while Tony Stewart dominated, leading 132. Stewart’s No. 20 Toyota was leading at the time of the yellow but relinquished the position on lap 274, dropping to the pits for a two-tire change. He got back on track in the 15th spot and finished the race 13th. 
 
"I don't know how to put it into words right now,” a visibly dejected Stewart said. “Everybody's worked hard. It's not for a lack of effort by anybody on this team by any means. It's just one of those years where everything that can go wrong goes wrong. That's part of racing and that's the gamble you take sometimes. The result today wasn't indicative of how our car was and how hard our team worked.”
 
Stewart’s teammate and Sprint Cup points leader, Kyle Busch, had a rough go of things on Sunday and matters were made worse during the final caution flag period when he was spun by a disgruntled Juan Pablo Montoya. Montoya was eventually penalized two laps for rough driving and finished 32nd but Busch said following the event and his 25th place finish that more should be done.

"I got a run on him earlier and I got on the outside and he kind of kept coming up a little bit,” Busch explained. “I didn't turn down into him and just barely touched his quarter panel. Then I got by him in three and four and he run me up the racetrack in the left rear. We came to that caution flag and he thought he beat me to the caution flag and I was just trying to get around the 40 (of Dario Franchitti), who was in front of us, and touched him on the door and he just turned left and spun me down the front straightaway. I don't know what his beef is, but obviously NASCAR should probably fix it."
 
Montoya of course, saw things differently and felt Busch wasn’t racing him clean.
 
“On the restart, I got around the outside of him in Turn 2 and he just went wide like I wasn’t even there,” Montoya said. “Then we touched each other and got beside him to the next corner and he starts banging on me, like he was trying to wreck me. I went into the corner and the wrecked happen, slowed down, and tried to say, ‘What are you doing,’ the next thing that I started to see was that he was hitting me. He runs good? Yeah. He has great cars? Yeah. I thought we had a decent car today and I don’t appreciate when people race me like that.”
 
Busch lost some ground in the point standings to Jeff Burton as a result. The separation now stands at 64 markers with nine races remaining before the 10-race Chase for the Championship.

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