SONOMA, Calif. — Kyle Busch claimed his first win of 2015 with a victory in Sunday’s Toyota/SaveMart 350 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Sonoma Raceway.
“This is awesome; it’s unbelievable. Can’t say enough about my team, everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing,” Busch said. “I don’t know if they can all understand how it feels. There’s some sentimental fans out there, for sure, the ones that are cheering that normally wouldn’t cheer for me. It’s definitely special to be here in victory lane in a Sprint Cup Series race at Sonoma.”
On newer tires, Busch drove up from seventh to second in one lap on a restart with seven laps to go, then got by Jimmie Johnson for the lead one lap later.
“I felt like the sooner the better,” Busch said. “I couldn’t let him (Johnson) hold me up. I couldn’t let him break my momentum and everything I had going. It would just take too long for me to get it back.”
Several other drivers also passed Johnson in the closing laps, dropping him outside the top five. Kyle’s older brother, Kurt Busch, finished second, Clint Bowyer third, Kevin Harvick fourth, and Joey Logano fifth.
“Gene Haas (car owner) has given everything to me, and I wanted to deliver a win for him,” Kurt Busch said. “It was an incredible drive all day. The car was fast. I thought we had the right sequence. Kyle got a lucky break when that yellow came out and he got onto pit road, and there were just too many cars between me and him on some of those restarts. I just didn’t quite get the restarts I needed.”
The yellow flag waved for the fifth and final time with just over 10 laps remaining. Johnson stayed out while other front-runners, including Bowyer and Kyle Busch, pitted.
Bowyer and Busch were the first two off pit road and lined up sixth and seventh, respectively, for the restart. Meanwhile, Jamie McMurray and Jeff Gordon lined up second and third after staying out with Johnson.
“I saw there were a bunch of cars between myself and the first guy on (new) tires,” Johnson said. “I felt pretty good about things. And then after about a lap and a half, I wasn’t feeling so good about things. They were there quickly. But if we came back tomorrow, we’d still run the same strategy. We played it perfectly.”
Two quick cautions between laps 74 and 78 of the 110-lap race left all drivers good to go the remaining distance without additional trips to pit road. Johnson was up front for the restart that followed the lap-78 caution, with Bowyer and Busch in second and third. As Johnson maintained the lead, Busch and Bowyer battled back and forth for second.
A.J. Allmendinger and Kurt Busch started the race on the front row, with Allmendinger on the pole. Busch took the lead at the start, and he and Allmendinger ran first and second until the first caution of the race for David Gilliland on lap 21.
Jeff Gordon moved up to third on lap eight and ran third to Busch and Allmendinger until the first yellow flag.
When the caution came out, the top three were among those who headed for the pits while eight cars stayed out. As a result, those three restarted ninth, 10th and 11th.
Bowyer and Tony Stewart preferred to stick to a two-stop strategy, while most of the six other cars that stayed out pitted earlier under green.
Bowyer was passed by Kyle Busch for the lead when the race restarted, while Stewart dropped back several spots. Bowyer and Stewart made their first stops during a lap 28 caution for Martin Truex Jr.
As a result of the wreck, Truex wound up outside the top 10 for only the second time through the 16 races this season.
“It’s just a product of restarts here,” Truex said of the incident. “When you are in mid-pack, it’s not a good place to be. It’s just really congested. We were a lot faster than a couple of guys around us. You’re trying not to get run over. You’ve got to make moves.”