Kyle Busch led from lap 47 on Saturday night at Homestead to win the Ford Nationwide Series 300 and hand Joe Gibbs his third consecutive owner’s title. Busch now has record 13 wins in 29 Nationwide races this year, his second this weekend. He has 24 wins this year in NASCAR’s top three series and 86 in his career.
He started second, only 0.005 second behind Joey Logano. He then led in clumps of 23, 14, 26, 11, 23, 33 and the final 23 laps. Logano and Harvick led 17 laps each; Danica Patrick led 4 under caution. Rookie of the Year Ricky Stenhouse led three, and Steven Wallace and Justin Allgaier each led one around Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Harvick ended second by 0.850 second, with series champion Brad Keselowski, Stenhouse, Bayne, series runner-up Carl Edwards, Logano, Gaughan, Menard and Jason Leffler completing Top 10. The No. 22 Dodge team began the race 41 points behind No. 18 Toyota team, inishing 71 points behind.Joe Gibbs now has three Cup and Nationwide owner’s titles each.
Busch applauded part-time teammate Brad Coleman for helping him win the title, acknowledging that the team would not have had this chance to success were it not for Coleman. Coleman couldn’t hide his delight, saying that it was a really good thing to have a backup driver like Kyle Busch.
Winning the owner’s title was a big thing for the crew, both from a pride point of view, but also as a reward for a team that did its job well, according to team president J.D. Gibbs.
Ratcliffe and his crew prepared for the weekend with their mind on both the 200-lap race and the owner’s championship. Both were considered very important and they knew that a win in the race would bring them the championship cup as well.
