Kyle Busch Goes for Second Consecutive NASCAR Sweep at Bristol

Kyle Busch made NASCAR history last August when he won the truck, Nationwide and Cup series races at Bristol Motor Speedway. He became the first driver ever to sweep all three national touring series races in a single weekend.

On Sunday, Busch will attempt to complete another weekend Bristol sweep, although this time it would include only the Nationwide and Cup series races; the truck series is not racing this weekend.

Busch has led an incredible 2,349 laps at Bristol across the three series in his career. He has 10 career wins at the track, with four in Sprint Cup, three in Nationwide and three in the truck series.

Busch won Saturday's Nationwide race in dominating fashion, leading a race-high 268 laps. It was his 45th series win and third Nationwide win at Bristol. Busch recorded another milestone Saturday, passing 10,000 laps led in Nationwide races, easily the most of all time.

Winner of three of the last four Sprint Cup Bristol races, Busch has to be considered the favorite in Sunday's race. In his last nine Bristol starts, he has two runner-up finishes and three more top-10s to go along with his four victories.

Busch will start the race in the 12th position, but that shouldn’t present much of a problem. Each of his previous Cup wins at the track came after qualifying 15th or worse, and Busch has demonstrated time after time his ability to drive aggressively through the field.

Despite his recent record at the track, Busch insists that he’s not the favorite in Sunday’s race. He pointed out that Carl Edwards won the Cup race at Las Vegas two years ago, and could have won all three races this year with a little luck.

Busch’s comments were a bit ironic, since he wrecked Edwards at Phoenix in the second race of the season when Edwards had a dominant car and thought he would win the race. He’s right about Edwards, however. Edwards is sitting on the pole and has a couple of Bristol Cup series wins himself.

If Busch wins the Food City 500 on Sunday, it would be the fourth time a driver has swept the Nationwide and Cup events at Bristol. Previous drivers who completed the Bristol sweep are Dale Earnhardt Jr. (August 2004), Matt Kenseth (August 2006) and Kyle Busch (last August).

Busch nearly completed a triple sweep at Phoenix International Raceway last month. However, after winning the truck and Nationwide races, he was passed by Jeff Gordon only a few laps before the end of the Sprint Cup race and finished second to fall just short of the weekend sweep.