Race 2 Win: Sprint Cup Series

Sprint Cup Series

Kobalt Tools 500 - WIX Filters Lap Leader Notes

WIX FILTERS LAP LEADER NOTES FOR THE KOBALT TOOLS 500 NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES RACE AT ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY, MARCH 9, 2008.

Kyle Busch led eight times for 173 laps to earn WIX Filters Lap Leader of the Race honors today’s Kobalt Tools 500. Busch has led at least one lap in all four Sprint Cup races this season for a total of 329 laps and has taken WIX Filters Lap Leader of the Race honors in three of the four Sprint Cup races this season.

Busch won today’s race, crossing the finish line 2.066 seconds ahead of second-place Tony Stewart. Busch scored his fifth victory in 118 Sprint Cup starts. He won for the first time since Bristol (March 25, 2007) and has racked up one win, three top-five and three top-10 finishes in four races this season.

Busch scored his first victory and first top-10 in eight Sprint Cup races at Atlanta. His previous best finish was 12th in 2006.

Busch scored the first victory for Toyota in the Sprint Cup Series.

UNOFFICIALLY Busch leads the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship standings by 73 points over second-place Greg Biffle and 91 ahead of third-place Kevin Harvick.

Busch leads Jimmie Johnson by two races (3-1) in the overall WIX Filters Lap Leader standings.

WIX FILTERS LAP LEADER AWARD STANDINGS
Kyle Busch 3
Jimmie Johnson 1

BUSCH QUOTES: “I need the WIX money [smiles]. In order to lead that many laps you’ve got to have a great racecar and Steve [Addington, crew chief] and all the guys on this 18 Snickers team did a great job for me. It was fun to go out there and run like we did. We had some competition there through much of the event but fortunately we were up there all day and could contend with it all day.” DID YOU THINK YOU BENT SOMETHING ON THE CAR DURING THE RACE? “Yeah, the rear end housing. When I slapped the fence it bent the rear end housing just a little bit. We’ll go back to the shop [and] we’re going to analyze that and see exactly what bent so we can try to make it a little bit stronger and make sure that doesn’t happen again. I probably could have kept up with the 99 if I had a straight rear end housing [smiles]. He was fast. He was really, really fast and I’m not sure if we would have been able to beat him but on the long run I think we had something for him. But there in the short run, the first 20 laps, we didn’t have anything for him.” COMMENT ON YOUR RUN TODAY. “I was a battle out there, that’s for sure. Those cars are pretty tough to drive but overall we had a pretty good car in practice yesterday where we felt okay about today and then the track seemed to warm up just a little bit and that gave us a little less grip for today. But overall we just kept working on it, kept trying to make it better. We battled a little bit tight, a little bit loose, and then a little bit loose and a little bit tight and kind of all over the board there somewhat. I scraped the wall getting into one one time and ended up bending the rear end or twisting the rear end just a little bit and that definitely didn’t help the handling of the race car any and actually hurt us a little bit. It just made me so loose getting in and so loose up off the corner that we had to tighten it up. And when we did that it tightened up the center of the corner, too, and we just could never get the center of the corner to cooperate with us. Just babied it around the bottom of the racetrack was what I had to do all day and if I missed it it just slowed us down so much that those guys behind us would close up. So I just had to make sure that I hit my marks and was smooth and slow and ride around the bottom.”

WIX FILTERS LAP LEADER AWARD WINNERS BY RACE
EVENT DRIVER
Daytona 500 Kyle Busch, 86 laps 
Auto Club 500 Jimmie Johnson, 76 laps
UAW-Dodge 400 Kyle Busch, 56 laps
Kobalt Tools 500 Kyle Busch, 173 laps