Kyle Busch, in the No.54 Monster Energy Toyota, made a last lap pass on Ryan Blaney, driver of the No.22 Discount Tire Ford, to score his 72nd career victory in the NASCAR XFINITY Series and his second win in four starts at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Blaney started 11th and ran in the top-3 most of the day before taking the lead from Busch on lap 75 of the 100 lap race. Blaney would lead the next 24 laps before Busch made the pass on lap 99.
After the race and his second place finish, Blaney was asked if this was his toughest loss in NASCAR.
“Yeah, pretty easy. Not many can say they had a chance to win at the Brickyard and gave it away, but I did just that,” he said. “I think I’m the only one in that category, so I’m leading that category but that’s definitely gonna sting for a long time.”
Busch started on the pole with a qualifying lap of 180.527 mph and led 53 laps.
“I just got close enough to make him mess up and made him get tight off two and then I was able to capitalize underneath him with him losing his momentum off of two and being able to get under him,” said Busch following the race.
Daniel Suarez, driving the Joe Gibbs Racing, No.18 ARRIS Toyota, started second and finished in the third position in his first start at the famed speedway. His second place finish was his 8th top-10 finish in 18 starts this year.
Suarez said, “First of all I want to congratulate my teammate and good friend Kyle (Busch). He’s been doing amazing and I’ve been learning a lot from him. I think thanks to that, we are where we are right now. We have to keep working, keep learning and I’m pretty sure we’re going to get our checkered flag soon.”
Paul Menard finished in the fourth position in his No.33 Menards Chevrolet, followed by fifth place finisher, Elliott Sadler in the No.6 OneMain Financial Ford.
Chris Buescher retains his points lead over Chase Elliott and Ty Dillon. Buescher finished in 16th place, Elliott finished 10th, and last year’s winner, Ty Dillon, finished in the 9th position.
There were eight lead changes among six drivers and three caution flags for 16 laps.
Chris Buescher has been playing defense for the last 3 weeks, huge mistake. He needs to revert to playing offense and being cautiously aggressive because that’s what got him such a good points lead and his wins. We have all seen it happen in basketball where the team with a good lead starts playing differently than what got them there and it always backfires. I heard Chris worrying about the points 3 weeks ago before the race and since then he hasn’t had a decent finish. Chase will win a race soon and keep cutting into the lead Chris has and getting back on the momentum train is a hard thing to do. If he keeps running scared he will not win the championship.