Cupsters Busch and Edwards Dominate the Winner's Circle at Nashville

Racin’ with Russ

When the smoke cleared from the Nashville Superspeedway high speed laps, full-time Cupsters Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards topped the charts among the Nationwide and Camping World Truck winners. Each dominated the majority of laps run.

The Friday night truck race on the 1.3-mile facility saw polesitter Busch lead the majority of laps with only a few detractors along the way, those being Todd Bodine and Ron Hornaday Jr.

In the early laps, Bodine was making great strides in reaching Busch’s back bumper, only to run afoul of truck making a sudden exit onto pit lane leaving Bodine with no where to go but clipping the corner of the truck ahead. Bodine spent the rest of the race trying to get the truck “right” to no avail, finishing a disappointing 19th, sending him to seventh in the overall standings.

For Hornaday, the veteran race got up on the wheel in the final segments of the race, even besting Busch on one of the final restarts with a characteristic slide job pass, putting him out front...briefly.

One the final restart, Busch returned the favor with the same kind of pass and went on to claim his 27th career truck race win along with his second of the season.

Wrapping up the top five included a surprising Nelson Piquet Jr, Timothy Peters, Hornaday and James Beuscher.

The latest results finds Johnny Sauter still atop the standings, but only by three points over Timothy Peters and four over Matt Crafton.

Note: I would be remiss for not commenting on the constant domination of Kyle Busch in the Truck and Nationwide series competitions. I’ve been on this soap box many times before, but just can’t help wonder how many millions of dollars of sponsor and award monies have been won by Busch (and other full-time Cup drivers) over the past four years.

Yes, the rules say anyone with a NASCAR Cup license can compete in whatever series and now the drivers have to declare what series they are running for points for, but the whole idea just rubs me and many others the wrong way. There is no other professional sport that allows a major leaguer to go down to the minors for a few days, kick butt and return to the majors the next day, weekend, etc.

It’s just wrong, but as long as the promoters are counting the extra ticket revenues for fans to watch seemingly two Cup races in the same weekend, there’s no end in sight. Same with the records Kyle Busch is racking up right now.

The results are skewed compared to the record keeping of 20 or 30 years ago. Sometimes I feel like it’s Mario Andretti playing with the kids at the local go-cart track. The best equipment, the most resources and above all, an experience level way above the other competitors.

Have any ideas on how to solve this problem? Drop me a line.

Nationwide

Saturday afternoon qualifying found Joey Logano on top with Carl Edwards on the outside of the front row. Logano led for a while, but it didn’t take long for Edwards to lead the pack for most of the race with Kyle Busch sniffing around for the lead.

Only from a fortuitous pit stop situation where Busch emerged off pit lane first did the Toyota driver take over the point. Edwards remained calm and very close to Busch’s back bumper before taking over for good late in the go.

The Ford-Fusion driver went on to claim his 31st Nationwide win, now tied with the legendary Jack Ingram and earned his second win of the season. Crossing the line a half second back of the stripe was Busch followed way back by Brad Keselowski, Logano and points leader Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

From Rumorville

Racer’s Dog bites mailman? Just when you thought ex-racer Jeremy Mayfield had enough problems with his legal mess with NASCAR, his female mail carrier was bit by his five pit bull-lab mix dogs, leaving the carrier with numerous cut and bites to her legs, arms and shoulders. More legal problems.

- Kasey Kahne reported that he had additional knee surgery recently to help with a torn meniscus. He will be fully functional by this weekend at RIR.

- The Wood Brothers announced they will miss the next three Sprint Cup races as part of their original game plan for their driver Trevor Bayne, although he will be in the upcoming All-Star race with aid from Good Sam.

Next week’s RWR will review the action from Richmond where the Sprint Cup and Nationwide teams will compete along with more racing news from around the globe.