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| Nascar Racing |
Nascar Racing Las Vegas - Richmond International Raceway lived up to its billing as “the home of racing excitement” on Saturday night as its 400-lap NASCAR race opened with a first-turn crash and ended with a furious four-car scramble that produced a familiar winner and scads of irked also-rans.
Busch credited the heroics to great tire-strategy by his crew chief and “bad-ass driving by me!”
That put rookie Kyle Larson on the pole, marking the first time the 21-year-old had led a 43-car Sprint Cup field into Turn 1.
NASCAR responded by fining Bowyer’s team $300,000, suspending its president indefinitely, fining Bowyer $50,000 and replacing his teammate with the wronged driver in the postseason.
A certain amount of rubbing, scraping and flat-out wrecking is inevitable as drivers jockey for position over 400 laps.
Bowyer was a bit early. He exited pit road with a small clump of burning rubber under his right front fender, and it erupted as the car gained speed.
Bowyer was forced to return to the pits, the right front of his car melted and his windshield caked in tire smoke.
Meanwhile, Gordon charged through the field and seized the lead on Lap 103, with Logano and Brad Keselowski in hot pursuit.
Under caution lap 230, Reed Sorenson ducked onto pit road with his Chevrolet’s under-carriage ablaze — another tire-related calamity. He was pulled from the car by a crew member from a rival team.
With 100 laps to go, Dale Earnhardt Jr. took the lead for the first time.
Suddenly, Kenseth overtook him, putting Gibbs Racing in sniffing distance of victory for the first time all night.
From there, the race boiled down to white-knuckle restarts. “What a crazy finish,” said Logano, who joins Kevin Harvick as the season’s only two-time winner. If we crash, we crash!
