Busch vs Busch: Now, hey, the brothers can put on quite a show

   Pit road at Charlotte gets remarkably jammed, and Kyle Busch's inadvertant run-in with Brad Keselowski probably doomed Kyle, though he did rally to finish third. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   CONCORD, N.C.
   So maybe this will be that long-awaited Busch versus Busch championship season. The brothers Kurt and Kyle are both strong and hot this spring, and Sunday night's Coke 600 was almost a Busch-Busch sprint to the finish.
   Kurt Busch wound up winning, dominating. But then some of his toughest competition, Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin, took themselves out. And Kyle Busch put himself in a big hole with a pit road tangle, and he had to rally late to get back in contention, but even then didn't have the car to take the game to his older brother.
    "What a night," Kyle Busch said with a grimace. "But these are the kind of races that make a championship."
    Tour leader Kevin Harvick had an up-and-down night, finishing 11th, and barely holding on to his lead, now just 29 points over Kyle Busch heading this week to Pocono – which is a good track usually for Harvick but not for either Busch.
    Kyle Busch's rally seemed improbably for a long time.
   "We had a really good race car, and I thought we were one of the best," Kyle said. "I could keep up with Kurt and Jamie (McMurray) in the daylight hours (the race started at 6:21 p.m. ET)....and getting to lap 150 to 200 (of the 400), or whenever we took the lead (actually lap 131) we were leading for a little ways (36 laps overall).
    "Then we came to pit road for a two-tire stop, and unfortunately on the exit we got tangled up with a couple cars (Brad Keselowski was coming into his own pit as Kyle Busch was leaving his, and they collided).  I missed the first one, and the second one I never even saw. I never even knew he was there. And that tore up the car pretty bad. 
    "We had a lot of body damage, and it hurt the toe (steering)...and I don't think the toe was ever right. 
    "The handling of the car was really, really off after that. So we were just trying to fight through the rest of the night and see what we could get and salvage a good day.  
    "We made a lot of changes to it and we kept making swings at it to try to make it better, and we got a third-place out of it."

    For McMurray this has already been a dream season. For a long time last fall he wasn't sure he'd even have a ride this season. But team owner Chip Ganassi finally put together a deal for him, and they opened things by winning the Daytona 500. Then they nearly won Talladega, and nearly won Darlington, and now a lightning performance in the 600.
   "I'm still excited -- from where I was last year and not knowing what was going to happen -- to get to be here right now," McMurray said.
   "I think we had the best car tonight. Certainly on the long runs we had the best car toward the end, and that is all you can ask for.
    "You can't win every time you have a fast car, though, and Kurt's bunch put themselves in position and they were able to win.
    "But I'm really happy with our finish."
    McMurray might well have pulled off the win if not for Marcos Ambrose's spin on lap 378, bringing out the caution while McMurray was leading comfortably over Kurt Busch.
    "If the caution didn't come out....our car was so fast we were a tenth or two-tenths quicker a lap, and I was only driving it about 90 percent," McMurray said.
    "Yes, that was really disappointing to have that caution come out...but that is why you race until the end."
  
  

  Jamie McMurray, for a long time, looked like he'd found the measure of Kurt Busch (Photo: Getty Images)
  

  
When the race restarted with 19 laps to go, Kurt Busch had the lead, after winning the race off pit road, and McMurray was sixth, after a slight bobble on his stop. Plus several drivers, including Jeff Gordon, had opted either not to stop for tires right then or only took two tires, and were thus up front and a bottleneck.
    For a while it appeared that McMurray's car would probably 'come in' on its setup eventually over that run, even though Kurt Busch was so fast on restarts.
    "It would just take us 20 or 30 laps to be able to catch Kurt, and then about 10 more to pass him," McMurray said.
    "Track position was so important...and when he got out in front of us on that last pit stop, and some of those guys stayed out, it was just a struggle to get around them."
 
    Meanwhile it was another ragged night for Ford. Greg Biffle got to the top-five but wound up scraping the wall and finished 32nd. Matt Kenseth even got to the lead late in evening, but faded to 10th. And Paul Menard, one of the season's surprises, came home with the best finish, an eighth.
    "We just can't get our car to drive right," Biffle said. "I was over-driving it though. We just want to run up front so bad...and we were good, then bad.
    "We were very hit-and-miss. The car just wandered around a lot out there."
    The wall? "I just couldn't drive it," Biffle said. "We got really loose in the corner, and it just flat out got away from me.  That pretty much did us in right there."
    Chevy's Jimmie Johnson can commiserate. Once Mr. Charlotte, Johnson twice smacked the wall.
    Kenseth and crew chief Todd Parrott had to work for what they got: "We didn't pass everybody; we did it by pit strategy and pit stops and the way cautions fell," Kenseth said.
    "It was good to get up front. But we don't have anything that can run with those guys.
    "Everybody is working on it as hard as they can, but we just have to keep working on it.
    "We don't have anything that can possibly win against those guys right now."

  
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   Kurt Busch's Blue Deuce was a blur most of the night (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)