Catchfence

DOVER, Del. — Kyle Busch had led 108 laps and needed to lead two more to win Saturday’s “Heluva Good! 200″ NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Dover International Speedway. It sounds easy, but he didn’t get them. Coming off the final restart, teammate Joey Logano got into Busch’s rear bumper, knocking Busch off the pace. The contact opened the door for Brad Keselowski and he jumped right through it, pulled ahead of Logano and led the final two-mile sprint to pick up his first win of the year. Logano finished third, followed by Clint Bowyer, Brian Vickers and Carl Edwards. Busch was left with a 17th place finish and was fuming as he exited his car and headed into the garage to prepare for the rescheduled “AAA Insurance 200 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series” race.

“We had a Heluva Good run,” Keselowski said. “We had a great car, and we put ourselves in a position to win. We needed to catch a break, caught a break and we don’t feel guilty at all, because we’ve caught some bad breaks, so we caught a good one.”

Logano and Busch had been racing each other all day, combining to lead 195 of the event’s 200 laps. Over the race’s previous eight cautions, Busch had the upper hand on restart situations, frequently driving away from Logano. So the 19-year-old was trying to make sure Busch didn’t get away from him as easily.

“At the end, I just screwed up,” Logano said. “That’s pretty much what happened. I got behind Kyle on the restart and finally got a good restart. He’d been kicking my butt on the restarts so I tried to stay right up on him, and he went into (turn) one and let up earlier than I thought he was going to, and I got in the back of him. It was completely my fault. There was no room for error where I positioned my car.”

Keselowski, who started 12th, led only two laps – the last two.

“I saw [Busch] slow down and [Logano] make an evasive maneuver and just saw a hole, went for the hole, and got very fortunate that it didn’t turn into a wad of cars wrecked in the first corner,” he said.

Earlier this year, when Keselowski won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Talledega, he led one lap – the last one, after making contact with Carl Edwards and infamously sending him into the catch fence.

“It’s just staying on the lead lap, gradually gaining positions, and keeping your car in one piece,” said Keselowski of his strategy. “That’s probably the opposite of the way [Busch] races, and that probably makes him madder than hell, but it works. I try to be in position at the very end and that’s where we were. At Nashville and Bristol [in 2008] I took the lead on the last run.”

Logano held the pole position and led the first 30 laps until an accident on the backstretch involving rookies John Wes Townley and Ken Butler. He gave it up for a lap during pit stops but immediately took it back and led 26 more laps.

At lap 57, Busch made a pass and led the next 27 laps. But at lap 74, Kevin Lepage wrecked on the backstretch and sent the field in for pit stops. Busch momentarily stalled coming out of his stop, allowing Logano to beat him back to the line and retake the lead.

But at lap 108, Busch caught Logano again and led the next 90 laps. At lap 194, the caution flag came out for debris on the track. It was that restart that triggered the contact between Logano and Busch at the end.

Busch retained his points lead in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, with Carl Edwards now 40 points back and Jason Leffler in third, 153 points behind Busch.

NASCAR weekend at the Monster Mile continues on Sunday afternoon with the “Autism Speaks 400, presented by Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips & Cheese.” Great seats still reamin. For tickets, call 800-441-RACE or visit DoverSpeedway.com.

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Dover International Speedway is owned by Dover Motorsports, Inc. (NYSE: DVD), a leading promoter of motorsports events in the United States. DVD subsidiaries operate four tracks in three states, and present more than 400 motorsports events each year. This includes 14 major, national events which include races sanctioned by NASCAR and NHRA. Dover Motorsports, Inc. also owns and operates Gateway International Raceway near St. Louis, Mo., Memphis Motorsports Park in Memphis, Tenn., and Nashville Superspeedway near Nashville, Tenn. For further information log on to www.DoverMotorsports.com.

- Dover International Speedway, Press Release