Winning the pole and spanking the field in the previous day’s XFINITY race wasn’t enough for Kyle Busch as he won the pole and spanked the field a second time to score the victory at the Brickyard.
The driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota led a new track record of 149 of 170 laps on his way to winning the Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“I hoped it would be like that and be that good,” Busch said on his dominance. “This Skittles Camry was awesome, I can’t thank everyone from Skittles enough and everyone from M&M’s and their 75th anniversary year this season with us. Of course Interstate Batteries. This Toyota was awesome today, it was just so fast and able to get out front and stay out front. Not even some of my teammates could challenge. This was hooked up and on rails. I can’t say enough about Sprint and everything they’ve done for our sport. Of course the fans – thank everyone for being here and everyone watching on TV – you guys are awesome. We appreciate all of our partners at Joe Gibbs Racing. Adam Stevens (crew chief) and these guys are a phenomenal group and I’m proud to be with them. It’s fun to come out here and have such a dominant piece at Indy. They don’t come along often so I was just hoping I didn’t screw it up.”
It’s his 38th career victory in 410 Sprint Cup Series starts, fourth of the season, second at the Brickyard, 13th top-10 finish of 2016 and 10th top-10 finish at the track. He’s the second driver to win in back to back years at Indianapolis and the first driver in NASCAR history to win both the pole and the victory in both XFINITY and Cup races on the same weekend.
Matt Kenseth finished second in his No. 20 JGR Toyota. It’s his ninth top-10 finish of 2016 and 11th in 17 races at Indianapolis.
“We never got in front of him (Kyle Busch) all day and the clean air is always really big here,” Kenseth said. “It was a great day for our Dollar General Camry. We did not have a good Friday, did not have a good Saturday and pretty respectable Sunday, so I have to thank all my teammates for helping us out. Jason (Ratcliff, crew chief) made some great changes. We were pretty competitive all day, just never got quite to the lead to see what we had.”
Jimmie Johnson overcame a speeding penalty to end Hendrick Motorsport’s three-race drought without a top-10 finish by rounding out the podium in his No. 48 HMS Chevrolet.
He said afterwards that the way he and his team overcame the penalty “says a lot. We’ve been working really hard to get our cars where they need to be. We’re still not happy, but we’re getting closer. I’m very proud of the effort today. Unfortunately a mistake on my part in that second segment, trying to get in the pits I got dinged for speeding and then rallied from like 24th back.
“We got third but I wish we would have gotten a win.”
Denny Hamlin overcame a speeding penalty to finish fourth in his No. 11 JGR Toyota.
“It was great, our FedEx Camry was great it got through traffic well as you saw going back to 20th with that penalty and driving to the front,” Hamlin said of his race. “Proud of the effort by our whole FedEx Camry team. It’s disappointing to just get a top-five. We had aspirations to come here and win. Like I said, you have to be perfect in every part of the race team, especially on race day to win these races, especially track position races and we just had one big mistake on pit road and we at least came back and got a top-five.”
Kyle Larson rounded out the top-five in his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet.
“I don’t know that I was expecting much more than a top-five really,” Larson said. “I didn’t know we’d have that speed in our car. And we were probably a fifth or seventh-place car. But I was able to get some good restarts there at the end.
“We qualified good for once, and it was just a solid weekend,” he added. “It was a good one.”
Kevin Harvick finished sixth in his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet. Joey Logano, who restarted second on the final restart, led six laps on his way to a seventh-place finish in his No. 22 Team Penske Ford.
“It just was not good,” Logano said of the final restart. “I had a decent restart the first time, and the second one I probably had just as good of a restart, but the 20 got underneath me and I was kind of stuck from that point and kind of fell into the clutches of the tires behind me. I was trying to stay down and be where I needed to be to get in front of them, but they just kept turning underneath me. I hate that we finished seventh, but it’s probably where we deserved to finish from a speed point of view. I thought our execution went very well today to give us an opportunity to win, but we couldn’t quite get it done when it mattered.”
Martin Truex Jr. finished eighth in his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota. Austin Dillon finished ninth in his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. Paul Menard rounded out the top-10 in his No. 27 RCR Chevrolet.
Brad Keselowski, who led 15 laps, finished 17th.
Nineteen cars finished the race on the lead lap and 33 were running at the finish.
The race lasted three hours, 17 minutes and 46 seconds at an average speed of 128.940 mph. There were four lead changes among three different drivers and eight cautions for 34 laps.
Harvick leaves Indianapolis with a 24-point lead over Keselowski in the points standings.
Next up for the Sprint Cup Series is the Pennsylvania 400 at Pocono Raceway next Sunday.
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