Kurt Busch Stomps Away With Sprint Cup Win at Infineon

The first hint that Kurt Busch would be strong on the weekend is when he topped the charts in practice. It only took nine laps in Sunday's race for the Penske Dodge driver to get out front of the hungry Sprint Cup pack, and he stayed there for most of the day to capture his very first road course win.

The beatin’ and bangin’ of sheet metal from last year continued this year with numerous on track battles resulting in spins, crushed cars and hot tempers. Infineon is certainly a track where paybacks can be resolved before the final flags wave.

While Kurt Busch was leading by a comfortable margin, other drivers such as Clint Bowyer or Juan Montoya tried their hand out front, albeit briefly. Montoya used his car more like a bulldozer at times, surely creating a list of paybacks to be remembered down the road.

Tony Stewart plowed into Brian Vickers heading into the hairpin, mixing up and wrecking a handful of rides. Not one to be outdone, Vickers later put Tony up on a tire barrier for many laps. Both drivers finished well down the roster.

Carl Edwards slowly worked his way to towards the front yet was passed by Jeff Gordon on the last lap, where Gordon tried to get to Busch to no avail.

Behind Busch’s 23rd career win were the cars of Gordon, Edwards, Bowyer and Marcos Ambrose.

Note: Dale Earnhardt Jr makes no bones about not liking the lefts and rights of NASCAR racing. After running deep in the pack, a slight involvement in an incident none of his doing left the No. 88 Chevy with a 41st place finish, dropping the fan favorite four spots in the overall standings to seventh.

Nationwide

This might as well have been called the Mayhem 200 as it was one of the wildest road racing events ever seen. There were wrecks, rubbin’, cars running out of gas as well as three green-white-checker ending to wrap this one up.

When the smoke cleared and the NASCAR officials reviewed the tapes of the final lap, the win was handed to Reed Sorensen, a driver who’s last win came some five years ago.

The race at Road America was started with Gibbs driver Michael McDowell on the pole and he led most of the race easily. Oh, there were combatants, such as Jacque Villenueve, Ron Fellows and Brian Scott, but the final few caution flags along with double-file restarts changed everything.

On one of the final restarts, Justin Allgaier managed to jump ahead of McDowell when the leader ran wide, then kicked off a multi-car wreck creating yet another restart.

One lap into the final restart, yet another wreck took place handing what appeared to be the win to Allgaier, until he ran out of gas while putting to the finish line.

With Sorensen in second, Fellows zoomed by under caution which we all know is a no-no, NASCAR officials awarded the win to Sorensen with Fellows, Villenueve, Elliott Sadler and Mike Wallace wrapping up the top five.

Open - Wheel News

The Indy Car series race in Iowa turned out to be one of the best all season. Marco Andretti took the checkers but barely over Tony Kanaan and Scott Dixon.

There was a lot of passing and close side-by-side racing, much to the approval of the standing room only 30,000 fan crowd at Iowa.

Dario Franchitti led most of the race but fell to fifth late in the go, but the Scotsman leads Will Power in the points by 20 markers.

Across The Pond

The Formula One series competed in Spain where Red Bull driver Sabastien Vettel took the pole, most laps led and the his sixth win of the season. Vettel managed to beat hometown favorite Fernando Alonso by 10 seconds and 27 seconds over Mark Webber on the challenging Spanish street course.

Vettel leads the points by a wide margin over Webber and Jenson Button.

From Rumorville

With all the talk about Red Bull leaving NASCAR, the latest rumors has the hi-buzz energy drink looking to leave as an owner, but may be interested in remaining a major sponsor with the right arrangement.

The current situation still has Brian Vickers wondering where that leaves him after the final checkers this season.

That’s it for this week. Next week’s RWR will review the Cup and Nationwide action from Daytona along with more racing news from around the globe.