#97-Kurt Busch disobeyed his crew chief and then held off Rusty Wallace, a determined veteran whose mastery of Bristol Motor Speedway is legendary, to win the Food City 500 on Sunday. Wallace has won nine times at this track and tried desperately to make that 10 and snap a 103-race winless streak on Sunday, but the 25-year-old Busch is assembling a pretty good record here, too. Busch’s victory was his third straight at Bristol and his fourth in the past five Nextel Cup events held here [It is Busch’s 9th career win]. To get this one, Busch stayed on the track despite crew chief Jimmy Fennig’s orders to come in on a caution flag with just more than 120 laps to go. Busch had pitted during a cycle of green-flag stops about 20 laps earlier and chose to stay out to gain track position. Eventually, that decision paid off. It got him the lead and he kept it despite a spate of late-race cautions, including one on Lap 493 that brought out a red flag on the last lap possible for NASCAR to use that to get a green-flag finish. The green flew again on Lap 498, leaving Wallace just two laps to try to dislodge Busch from the top spot. #29-Kevin Harvick ended up third with #40-Sterling Marlin and #17-Matt Kenseth fifth. It was a typical day at Bristol. #17-Matt Kenseth and #42-Jamie McMurray banged fenders coming to the checkered flag, with Kenseth getting fifth and McMurray sliding to eighth after going up the track in Turn 4. On the aptly-named cool-down lap, McMurray chased down Kenseth’s Ford and hit him twice, finally spinning the #17 out near the entrance to pit road.(see full report at ThatsRacin.com) Race results at: JAYSKI’s Bristol Results Page ThatsRacin.com NASCAR.com.(3-28-2004)
