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Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series “O’Reilly Auto Parts 500”

Kyle Busch held off a late charge from Kevin Harvick and broke into the 2018 Monster Energy Series win column with his first victory of the season on Sunday in the O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Busch, who won a Camping World Truck Series race in Las Vegas last month, started 8th on Sunday and led a race-high 116 laps on his way to Cup Series win 44,  but his first in NASCAR’s top tier since Martinsville Speedway last fall, ten races ago.

Busch had built a four second lead with just under a hundred miles remaining before Harvick began chipping away, falling 0.3 of a second short of his 4th victory of the year. Jamie McMurray came home in 3rd place, his best finish of the season. Erik Jones, one of Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammates, and Ryan Blaney (Saturday’s X-finity Series winner) completed the top five. Pole winner Kurt Busch had top 5 finishes in each of the first two stages and led 40 laps en route to a 7th place overall finish. Darrell (Bubba) Wallace, Jr. was the highest-placed rookie, 8th in the 37 car field.

The victory moved Kyle Busch into second place among active drivers with three Cup Series wins in Fort Worth, still leaving him 4 short of Jimmie Johnson’s track record of 7. And speaking of the seven-time champion, Johnson finished 35th yesterday in his bid for back-to-back springtime wins on the mile-and-a-half oval. He started 9th but was involved in a 7 car crash early in the final stage and was saddled with his second D-N-F of the season.

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– story by John Singler
www.mrn.com
Concord, North Carolina

 

Top 10 Drivers in the Standings as of 4/09/2018

1. Kyle Busch @ 316 points
2. Joey Logano (-38)
3. Ryan Blaney (-51)
4. Kevin Harvick (-59)
5. Martin Truex, Jr. (-66)
6. Clint Bowyer (-67)
7. Brad Keselowski (-79)
8. Kurt Busch (-94)
9. Denny Hamlin (-94)
10. Kyle Larson (-114)

For the complete driver standings, please visit the official page on nascar.com.

 

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