Kyle Busch drawing on positive momentum at WWTR

Kyle Busch and Joey Logano threw everything they had at each other in a fierce overtime battle to win Sunday at World Wide Technology Raceway.

Unfortunately for Busch, he didn’t land the winning blow. He finished second in the inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at WWTR after losing the lead with two laps to go and being unable to make the crossover move stick.

Busch restarted as the race leader and did so after choosing the outside lane. He and Logano charged into the first corner side-by-side, with Logano driving in deeper to slide up in front of Busch for the lead. Busch moved to the inside to get back underneath Logano coming off the corner, and it was a drag race down the backstretch.

This time it was Busch driving into the corner deep and retaking the race lead, but his Toyota didn’t stick, and as Busch went wide Logano drove back by on the inside. Busch then got sideways off the corner, giving Logano enough gap for the last lap to drive away to the win.

“My car was better on the outside, but it took a few laps for it to get rolling up there,” Busch said. “[On] cold tires, firing off on that restart – I didn’t have the help behind me. I was going to put my hand out the window and signal to Kurt [Busch] to push me along and Joey [Logano] was half a car back out my window trying to see it, so the hand signal was going to be irrelevant, so I didn’t do it, which kind of made Kurt too far back.

“I got into Turn 1 by myself and was too far back. When you are the guy on the inside, you just flush the guy on the outside and it’s over. I got a crossover, though, but threw it into [Turn] 3 too far. It chattered all four tires. I just didn’t have any grip to get off the corner well enough to be on his outside, so I don’t know…”

Busch led a race-high 66 laps. He was successfully holding off Logano for the race lead before the final caution when Kevin Harvick crashed with four laps to go in regulation.

“[Today was] was better than Phoenix, overall,” Busch said, as many compared WWTR to Phoenix. “We were more in the running than [Phoenix] for sure. The guys on this JGR Toyota — Snickers, MM’s, Interstate Batteries, Rowdy Energy, Breathe Right — [the] team did a good job to improve, and it’s something to work off of.”