Kyle Busch led all 200 laps of the Nationwide race at Phoenix International Raceway on Saturday, a day after he won the Camping World Truck Series race at PIR.
Busch’s performance was the 14th time a driver has gone wire-to-wire in the Nationwide Series. The last time that happened? Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2003 at Daytona.
Busch started on the pole and took off like a rocket from the restart. Carl Edwards was the only other driver to ever be in the same zip code as Busch, and he was able to mount a serious challenge with just under 20 laps to go.
Edwards was able to get alongside of Busch in the corners for two laps, but since Busch was able to blunt Edwards’ momentum each time, Edwards was never able to nose ahead or complete the pass. After clearing Edwards with 18 laps to go, Busch had smooth sailing the rest of the way.
Busch will start fourth in Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series race at Phoenix and will attempt to win all three major NASCAR series races in the same weekend for the second time. In August of last year, Busch became the first driver to win in Trucks, Nationwide and Cup when he swept the weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.
And since Busch is competing for the Sprint Cup title, his Nationwide win means that the winning driver in each of the first five NASCAR races of 2011 hasn’t scored any points.
By the way, Danica Patrick finished 17th and currently sits 4th in the points standings because of the new single-series points rule.
Kyle Busch leads every lap in Nationwide race at Phoenix
