#5-Kyle Busch scored his second straight victory in the series on Saturday with a victory in the Cabela’s 250 at Michigan International Speedway and his fifth this season by leading 87 of 125 laps and pulling away from veteran #9-Mark Martin after a restart with 10 laps to go to win by nearly four seconds. Since Busch won the Carquest 300 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in May, he now has three victories and a fifth-place finish in the past 10 races. In the other six races, however, he has failed to finish in the top 10. That had allowed #8-Martin Truex Jr. to open a 117-point lead in the series points standings coming into Saturday’s race, and for a while it looked like Busch was going to make a big gain. Truex, who started on the pole alongside Busch on Row 1 after qualifying was rained out Friday, led the first 22 laps but faded after his car got extremely loose on his first pit stop. “It took us until the last pit stop to get it right again,” said Truex, who rallied to finish third and hold onto the championship lead by 97 points. Martin started 43rd, squeezing into the field because the #9 car he was driving had made enough previous qualifying attempts this year. The all-time leader with 45 Busch Series victories, Martin had not raced in the series since the end of the 2000 season. #1-Casey Mears finished fourth and #38-Kasey Kahne was fifth. Nextel Cup veteran #66-Rusty Wallace, making his first Busch Series start since 1997, finished sixth. Busch’s fifth victory tied Greg Biffle for the record for a rookie of the year candidate in the Busch Series. Saturday’s race was slowed by eight yellow flags for 33 laps, both records for a Busch race at the 2-mile Michigan track. The last came for debris on Lap 113, erasing Busch’s lead of more than 5 seconds at the time. But when the green flew with 10 laps remaining, Busch simply pulled away again.(ThatsRacin.com)
For results see:
ThatsRacin.com
BGNRacing.com
Motorsports One
NASCAR.com.(8-21-2004)
