Kentucky Pete Pistone's Rearview Mirror



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Brotherly Love? Nope.

No love was lost between Kurt and Kyle Busch in the final rounds of the Quaker State 400 on Saturday night at Kentucky Speedway. The two former champions of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series did not give each other the other as they ran under the checkered flag. After contact with his younger brother and a side slip in the last corner, it was the old Busch who was standing in Victory Lane.

It was the third time the Busch brothers finished on a score of 1 to 2 and Kurt was winning for the first time.

The electric end crowned an interesting race that featured incredibly wild reboots mixed with strategy and battle for the track position on the pit road. According to many pilots, Kyle Busch has described the passing as difficult to describe as "aerial game", thus referring to the aerodynamic nuances created by the 2019 rules package.

But there have certainly been many moments of racing side by side throughout the night to spice up the debates leading to the epic arrival. A final that will be remembered long after the memory of what was happening before it fades.

  • The victory of Kurt Busch might have clarified his future and the Chip Ganassi races. "I thought maybe this year would be the last but we're having so much fun that we'll have to see how things go," Busch said in Victory Lane. "I felt as if the connection with Chip was perfect right away. It was a 30-minute conversation, we got a contract and we went running. Now we have this win, the second half is ahead of us and it's a matter of everything. While nothing is frozen, the sponsorship of Monster Energy is paramount, but a return to the # 1 car for Busch, that's 2020 is more than a possibility.
  • There is no doubt that this year's version of the "Big 3" is alive and well in the Xfinity series, as Cole Custer, Christopher Bell and Tyler Reddick have again proved with the 1-2-3 finish of the Alsco 300 from Friday night. Custer's fifth win The year of the year added an extra layer to the plot surrounding Stewart-Haas Racing's future and his inevitable rise to the Cup series. Clint Bowyer's recent struggles have generated more speculation about the vulnerability of his SHR pilot, but nothing indicates for the moment that Custer could enter the 14th position in 2020. All that the trio can do is to continue to run well and win, something that they continued to do in Kentucky.
  • Thursday's Gander Outdoors Truck Series offered a good opening for the weekend at three Kentucky highs. The 225-kilometer race included just about everything imaginable, including a tight race, accidents, pilot battles, high fuel consumption and a new winner at Tyler Ankrum. The finish also had a major impact on the Truck series playoff grid: there are only three races remaining to allow the drivers to qualify for the post-season – Pocono, Eldora and Michigan – a trio of tracks which could not be more different from each other.
  • An early weekend earlier with a Thursday night race has helped to at least slow down or even stop the seemingly incessant criticisms of Justin Haley and Spire Motorsports after their win at Daytona last weekend. Rather than considering the shortened victory since Haley's rain as a long awaited surprise and "one for the little guy", it triggered an opposite reaction from most fans and even a handful of media outlets claiming that Spire was simply in the sport "Looting money." Ridiculous. The list of winners of the weather-shortened NASCAR race is long with names like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Michael Waltrip, Chris Buescher, Dave Marcis, Joe Nemechek and David Reutimann, to name a few. Spire spent $ 6 million to buy the defunct Furniture Row Racing charter, an opportunity that any team had under the rules of the current economic model of the sport. Everything happened in a strange and strange way last Sunday but did not deserve the disdain displayed by so many people.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the automobile network.

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