The checkered flag was in sight. Kyle Busch was on the brink of winning Saturday night’s Cook Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway. Then, the bottom lane got jumbled on the final lap.
“We got off of [Turn] 2, somehow the bottom lane got discombobulated, broke all of our momentum, the top lane just rolled,” Busch said. “Once they got in front, with as little as energy as there was with the lack of cars that there were, it was hard to make anything happen from turn four to start/finish.”
Prior to the overtime finish, facing a must-win situation, Busch was running out of time to make a move for the lead. The No. 8 Chevrolet ran towards the front of the field all race long, but contact with Austin Cindric sent the No. 2 car into Josh Berry, who ended on his roof, sliding across the infield of the backstretch.
That moved Busch to the control car for the overtime restart.
With a shove from Christopher Bell, Busch got ahead of the field. Parker Retzlaff, making his second Cup start, pushed Harrison Burton down the backstretch on the final lap and gave the No. 21 Ford enough momentum to clear the No. 8 car. Coming off Turn 4, Busch swung high, then darted low. Burton beat him to the checkered flag by .047 seconds to score his first Cup Series victory.
“Just finished second,” Busch added. “It’s all good. We were really, really, really lucky tonight to miss a few of them crashes. Just real proud of everybody, Randall [Burnett, crew chief], all the guys at [Richard Childress Racing], [Earnhardt Childress Racing] did a great job, brought a fast car.
“We’ll take this. Got a good little stretch going with these last three weeks, and hope we can do what we need to do next week.”
The only way Busch thought he could win was if he “flat out” wrecked Burton. He wasn’t willing to do that, especially knowing how much of a detriment right-rear hooking a driver can be.
Instead of being locked into the playoffs and padding his record of scoring at least one victory in 20 consecutive years, Busch enters the final race of the regular season at Darlington Raceway having to win in order to just make the postseason. Sitting 106 points below the eliminaiton line, he is mathematically eliminated from making it on points. Busch has a single victory in 25 Darlington starts — all the way back in 2008 — and finished 27th in the spring race.
“I mean, we want to,” Busch said on if he can reach Victory Lane at Darlington. “We ran good there the first time I ran with these guys early last year. But early this year, we struggled mightily. We’ll just have to go with hopefully a really good package that works, get our job done.”
Busch enters Darlington riding a streak of consecutive top-five finishes for the first time since last October. Richard Childress Racing has also strung together respectable runs at Darlington in recent seasons with Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick.
The victory for Burton was his second top-five finish in 98 Cup starts. It’s the coveted 100th victory for Wood Brothers Racing.