Busch wins 100th Xfinity race in return to Nashville

LEBANON, TENN. • Kyle Busch raced to his 100th career Xfinity Series victory Saturday at Nashville Superspeedway, where he won for the fourth time.

Busch won in the Xfinity Series in 2009 and the Truck Series in 2010 and 2011, but the track closed the year he won his last race. The speedway reopened this weekend and will host its first Cup race Sunday.

Busch led seven times for 123 laps and beat Justin Allgaier in overtime for his third victory in three Xfinity races this season. His 100th win in his 360th career start is a nearly 28% winning percentage.

“I remember growing up as a kid watching Mark Martin win every week and wondering, ‘Can anybody beat this guy?’ And that was 49 wins,” Busch said. “So I just can’t fathom, right now myself, what 100 really means. It’s certainly something I will look back on once all is said and done and I’m in a rocking chair somewhere.”

It might be all said and done after two more Xfinity Series races. Busch doesn’t think Joe Gibbs Racing has sold any Xfinity races yet for him in 2022 and so this year could be his last running his allowed five events a season.

“Why? Did you hear the crowd? Nobody likes me,” Busch said. “I get beat up, whether it is the fans or (media), like ‘Why am I doing it? What am I doing it for? Why am I beating on the little guys?’ I love winning. If I can’t win on the Cup side, hell, I may quit that and come back and run Xfinity full time.”

NASCAR only allows Cup drivers to compete in five Xfinity and five Truck Series races a year and Busch uses all his starts. NASCAR first set the limit at 10 races in 2017, cut it to seven in 2018 and then five last year.

“If you look back on the last 10 years, with all the limitations, I mean hell, I probably could have made that number 150 by now, 160, 70, whatever,” Busch said. “But with everything that went down and only been able to run five a year, it’s 100 now.”

Busch and Allgaier had a spirited late battle and swapped the lead six times in the final 49 laps. As the crowd booed him after he collected the checkered flag, he thanked his “Rowdy Nation” supporters and mocked the haters.

Hendrick trio sets pace at reopened Nashville Superspeedway

LEBANON, TENN. • New track, same old names atop the leaderboard. William Byron, Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott paced the first ever Cup Series practice at Nashville Superspeedway in yet another display of how dominant Hendrick Motorsports is right now.

Hendrick drivers have won five straight headed into Sunday’s race, the first for Cup at a speedway that sat dormant the last decade and first for the series in the Nashville area in 37 years.

Asked what it will take to beat a Hendrick driver, Ryan Blaney of Team Penske had only one idea: “Wreck ’em, I guess.”

Denny Hamlin, points leader this season but still searching for his first win, gave Byron a playful shove as he walked past following Saturday’s 55-minute practice session. Hamlin was eighth-fastest in practice but the Toyotas struggled around Nashville and its other four drivers were 20th or lower on the speed chart.

“We’re a little worried,” admitted Martin Truex Jr. “We’re about to do some wholesale changes. It feels really slow, really greasy, just really slick and hard to find any grip.”

Nashville opened in 2001 and hosted 21 Xfinity Series races and 13 Truck Series events before it closed in 2011 when it couldn’t get a coveted Cup date. Dover Motorsports owns the track and moved one of its weekends from its Delaware facility to Nashville to re-open the speedway and at last host a Cup race.