Kyle Busch Dominates, Tallies Sixth Truck Texas Win

Kyle Busch obliged the Texas Motor Speedway faithful with his win in Friday night’s SpeedyCash.com 250. (Photo: Dylan Nadwodny | The Podium Finish)

FORT WORTH, Texas — Kyle Busch continues to add to his impressive NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series record after Friday night’s SpeedyCash.com 250 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Busch, in his penultimate start of the Truck season schedule, looked like the pied piper in his No. 7 Realtree Chevrolet Silverado. Starting from the fourth position, the Las Vegas native bided his time while polesitter Nick Sanchez led the opening 16 laps.

Then, Christian Eckes got past Sanchez to enjoy the number one position for the next 21 laps. With three laps left in Stage 1, a methodical, calculative Busch took the lead from Eckes and showcased his truck’s power and dominant abilities, taking the stage win over Eckes, Sanchez, Zane Smith and Stewart Friesen.

If the field thought it had a chance in Stage 2, Busch quickly erased such thoughts, taking the victory by 2.862 seconds over Corey Heim with Sanchez, Eckes and Taylor Gray rounding out the top five. In fact, Busch led wire-to-wire in this portion of the race.

A trio of crashes set the stage for an exciting setup to the finish, even if Busch had the class of the field. A Lap 132 caution for Layne Riggs in Turn 2, followed by a Lap 147 multi-truck crash in Turn 2 involving Kris Wright, Mason Massey and Friesen bunched up the contenders.

Namely, Eckes had the opportunity to snooker Busch on Lap 150, darting past the two-time Cup champion for the lead with 16 laps separating him from another win. However, a Turn 3 crash involving Dean Thompson, Grant Enfinger, Johnny Sauter and Matt Crafton set up an 11-lap dash to the finish.

In Busch’s 174th career Truck start, he had a determined Heim ready to pounce and use some aerodynamic maneuvers for the lead and win. Despite a determined drive by Heim, it was a pitched but futile scrap against the driver with a winning percentage of 37.9.

Heim made it a bit interesting in the final two laps before he ran out of time and opportunities. On this occasion, Busch bested Heim to the stripe by 0.112 seconds.

Following the patented checkered flag bow and salute, Busch sang his praises to his Spire Motorsports team on his second win of his Truck season campaign.

Kyle Busch bowed before the Friday night faithful attending the SpeedyCash.com 250 at Texas. (Photo: Dylan Nadwodny | The Podium Finish)

“Great team. Everybody here at Spire, appreciate Brian Pattie and everybody that was able to work so hard to prepare us a really fast Realtree Silverado,” Busch said to FOX NASCAR’s Amanda Busick. “Thanks to Team Chevy, thanks to Realtree, their first NASCAR win, Mr. Jordan is at home. I know Tyler’s here, so exciting to have those guys with us.

“Gonna go celebrate in Victory Lane and carry these bright colors there. I told them that I wanted to do it for them, so I’m glad we could.”

When Busch was told that Michael Waltrip thought it was one of the coolest wins by the 38-year-old racer in his Truck series career, he politely but quickly spurned such thoughts.

“No, no, there’s cooler,” he said. “But they definitely kept me honest, I’ll give them that. So, I remember back in, man, I wanna say it was 2005 or 2006, maybe 2007, something like that at Atlanta, where I had to come from 15th with two to go. So, that one was a little bit more exciting. That was a lot of fun, but crazy all in the same breath.”

Despite Friday night’s race not having quite the same dramatics as Busch’s Atlanta triumph, Heim gave it all he had to make the veteran racer sweat in the final laps. Much like last year’s Truck race at Pocono, Heim tried to size up Busch for the win.

“It just seemed like a big track position game at the end there,” Heim said. “Of course, you can get really big runs down the straightaways, but once you got to the corners it is really hard to stay behind somebody and keep momentum.

“I just was doing all I could there – trying to take him three-wide on the next-to-last restart and then got the caution. I was just trying to build a run on him, but he is just too good. He does a really good job.”

In the grand scheme of things, Heim netted another stellar result seventh consecutive top 10 finish in as many races.

“I’m really happy with our run tonight in our Safelite Tundra,” he said. “We got stage points and finished second. I feel like we were probably a fifth-place truck, and I admittedly struggle here a little bit at this race track, so to finish second here is a good day for us and we will build on it to get better.”

Ultimately, it was a good, clean battle of aerodynamic gamesmanship between Busch and Heim with the former commending his former teammate on his efforts in the final two laps.

Kyle Busch kept Corey Heim at bay despite the latter’s valiant efforts in Friday night’s SpeedyCash.com 250 at Texas. (Photo: Dylan Nadwodny | The Podium Finish)

“Corey kept us honest right there,” Busch said. “He started to find that top over there to get some momentum over there. I tried it with three (laps) to go and I chattered really bad. So, my front just wasn’t working over there. But I needed more laps on my tires to be able to get up there to make that work. But he made it.

“Got to my rear bumper getting into (Turn) 3, and I just kinda was like, ‘I didn’t know which way to go.’ So I ran the middle and then darted [the] bottom and then he slipped up top. So, I guess we had enough of a gap after that.”

Stage 1 Top 10 Results

1. Kyle Busch (i)
2. Christian Eckes
3. Nick Sanchez
4. Zane Smith (i)
5. Stewart Friesen
6. Daniel Dye
7. Layne Riggs (R)
8. Grant Enfinger
9. Corey Heim
10. Taylor Gray

Stage 2 Top 10 Results

1. Kyle Busch (i)
2. Nick Sanchez
3. Christian Eckes
4. Corey Heim
5. Taylor Gray
6. Layne Riggs (R)
7. Zane Smith (i)
8. Daniel Dye
9. Grant Enfinger
10. Johnny Sauter

SpeedyCash.com 250 at Texas Motor Speedway Race Results