Twice Terrific: Kasey Kahne Wins Second Race in a Row for Kyle Busch Motorsports

Ashley McCubbin

Mar 12, 2011

Kyle Busch headed off on vacation but knew he had to find somebody who’d be able to drive the truck and get a good finish.

Busch turned to fellow Sprint Cup driver Kasey Kahne, who had won two races and finished second in his first three Camping World Truck Series starts.

“I just want to go racing,” Kahne said in the pre-race show when asked why he was running it.

TOP NEWS

Kahne qualified the truck second and ran up front most of the race. He took the lead for the final time with 70 laps to go and never looked back as he led the race until the end for his third truck win.

"I mean, I came into this weekend wanting to win as that was the plan,” he said in victory lane. “This is a tough series to win in and on the restart with Todd, he drove me all the way up to the wall and I think he got himself loose there.

"I want to thank Kyle Busch for letting me drive this truck and all of Kyle Busch Motorsports for working so hard on this truck. Eric Phillips was great to work with.

“I will buy them vacationing time to drive this truck, again."

On the final restart, it looked as if Todd Bodine would finish second; however, he got loose when trying to pass Kahne and ended up falling back to third behind Ron Hornaday.

"I owe everything to Jeff Hensley and this entire team working so hard on this truck,” Hornaday said. “I got into the wall in practice, causing them to work harder and then got into somebody on pit road.

"Your brother (Elliott Sadler) spun his tires and I got into the back of him. Kahne was pretty tough; we got to figure out what he does."

"Kasey was going to be tough and we both spun the heck out of tires,” Bodine said. “I drove into one and about wrecked. These trucks are so aero-dependent as I don't know how I didn't wreck with that truck on my tail.

"Ron did what any veteran would do and legged back there. I am loving the Truck Series. We didn't want third, second would've been better, but we're back.

Matt Crafton finished fourth to take over the points lead, six points over Cole Whitt in the standings.

"We had a problem on pit road and to come from shotgun where we were with 46 to go to here is pretty good,” Crafton said.

James Buescher rounded out the top five, while Timothy Peters, Elliott Sadler, Cole Whitt, Johnny Sauter and David Starr finished out the top 10.

As a whole, the race saw a record number of 10 cautions, as multiple trucks found trouble while trying to figure out the track.

On lap 74, Nelson Piquet Jr. got into the wall with a flat tire. Behind him, Joey Coulter and Jason White looked to try to slow down to miss him, but both got hit from behind and then made heavy contact with each other.

"Just somebody spun out in front of us and with the sun going over the wall, it got hard to see, and I just got run into from behind,” Coulter said. “I'm sure it was nobody's fault, just a blind spot on the track. It was just starting to get fun, as I was just starting to learn this place."

Later on lap 97, Ricky Carmichael wrecked as Nelson Piquet Jr. and Johanna Long wrecked behind him. Carmichael wrecked first and then behind him, Piquet and Long made contact, which cut both their tires.

Piquet went up into the outside wall while Long plowed into Carmichael as she couldn't steer the truck around him. There was a seven-minute red flag to clean up the wreck.

Carmichael said it probably started either him getting loose or somebody making contact with him.

"Yeah, I'm all right,” Carmichael said. “We were fast in race trim all day long. Coming from behind, we qualified horrible; you put yourself in a hole and we never got caught up from there.

"Finally, I think I know what I am doing, and having to come from behind makes it tough."

"We had a really good truck, and we finally got our lap back,” Long said. “Our team worked hard on the truck and hopefully we can get the truck fixed for Nashville, as sponsorship is low.....I think another truck hit the wall and I think I hit him as he came down a little bit."

The next Camping World Truck Series race is in three weeks at Martinsville Speedway.

FINISHING ORDER

1 Kasey Kahne

2 Ron Hornaday Jr.

3 Todd Bodine

4 Matt Crafton

5 James Buescher

6 Timothy Peters

7 Elliott Sadler

8 Cole Whitt

9 Johnny Sauter

10 David Starr