Kyle Busch wins third straight Atlanta NASCAR Truck race with late charge

Nine of Kyle Busch’s record 68 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series wins have come at EchoPark Speedway (Atlanta), including the last three with Spire. Today, he bested Ricky Stenhouse Jr, Ben Rhodes, and Stewart Friesen in a thrilling battle for the win, and captured the checkered flag after a helpful push from teammate Carson Hocevar.

“Finally, I win one that he’s here,” said Busch of his son Brexton, who joined the post-race celebrations. Huge help from behind. Carson Hocevar was a great teammate today. Early on in the race, I was like, wait a second, okay, same old Carson. But as we got towards the end, we started working together and we started being able to maneuver our way through. The second stage there, I was behind him, pushing him, we were able to go forward, and then there at the end, he was my wingman.”

On the battle for the win, he added: “I mean, there’s just so much going on, right? And you’re just trying to protect your lane and you’re trying to get the slingshot when you need the slingshot to get back to the front. Those guys were trying to use that on us, and we were having to defend that. And if Carson would have pulled out of line once or twice, it would have been a whole hell of a lot bigger mess than what it was. He kept it pretty calm because we had a wingman. You gotta have a teammate in this sort of thing.”

Last year, Busch and Hocevar had a run-in in the Cup race at Atlanta, and Hocevar could hardly believe just how well they worked together to ensure a 1-2 for Spire on Saturday. He even joined him on the frontstretch, doing one victory donut and driving up alongside Busch.

“For anybody else than (Spire owner) Jeff Dickerson, I don’t know — especially a year from here — I think that’s when he was, you know, hating my guts, especially in the Cup race. I don’t think I’d ever be excited to watch a Kyle Busch truck win. But they kept warning me like, ‘245° water temp is when it starts shutting off’ and I looked down, it’s about 250°. So I kept sputtering and the bottom kept surging and yeah, I had no shot, you know, to win the race.  So if I wasn’t gonna have a shot, I was gonna make sure the company had a shot.

“I went over to just high five him because I thought it’d be a good picture, be good for the marketing team and good for the social. That was a business decision right there to do that. So I had fun. I wish there were a lot of Truck guys that wanted to race more.  They just want to sit on the top. And you know, I think I had my own fun and we had a blast and me and Kyle worked great together. And yeah, I don’t think I’d ever, even as a kid, would have loved to watch Kyle win a Truck race, but when Jeff Dickerson’s on the side watching and with TWG and all these guys, it’s pretty good.”

Gio Ruggiero finished third, Ben Rhodes fourth, Corey Heim fifth, Chandler Smith sixth, Jake Garcia seventh, John Hunter Nemechek eighth, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. ninth, and Justin Haley led the way for Kaulig Racing’s Ram effort in tenth.

The event ended in a race against the clock, as rain delayed the start and forced NASCAR to put a hard time limit of 4:20pm EST. on the race. There were still a few laps to go in the scheduled distance with the event hit the time limit, triggering two laps to go.

Stage 1

About an hour later than planned, the race went green with a cutoff time of 4:20pm EST, giving them about 90 minutes to get the event in.

Rhodes led the way from the start, while Adam Andretti struggled to hold onto his track in the middle of the pack. After a couple impressive saves, he finally went for a half-spin, but the race remained green.

Christian Eckes was the first truck to go behind the wall due to a broken driveshaft, while Grant Enfinger had to make an unscheduled pit stop due to a flat left-front tire.

The front trio of Rhodes, Majeski and Busch escaped the rest of the pack, only to catch some slower traffic that allowed some other competitors to catch back up. Heim took the lead from Rhodes, and then battled side-by-side for the top spot.

With a last-lap shove, Heim won Stage 1 with Rhodes second, Busch third, Hocevar fourth, Majeski fifth, Friesen sixth, Perez seventh, Honeycutt eighth, Hemric ninth, and Ruggiero tenth. 

Stage 2

A handful of trucks opted to take just two fresh tires, including Rhodes. Heim fell all the way down to tenth with a slower stop, and he also took four tires.

The entire stage ran green, but it wasn’t exactly clean. Both Kaden Honeycutt and Ty Majeski hit the wall, falling off the lead lap as they went to pit road.

Rhodes dominated the stage, but it all fell apart with two laps to go in Stage 2 as the truck ran out of fuel while leading. Friesen inherited the lead, but Stenhouse aggressively took the top spot on the final lap of the stage. Friesen cut back under him, winning Stage 2 in a photo finish. Stenhouse was second, followed by Hocevar, C. Smith, Ruggiero, Busch, Garcia, Perez, Heim, and Riggs.

Stage 3

Dawson Sutton in flames after crash, No. 26 Rackley W.A.R.

Photo by: Jonathan Bachman – Getty Images

Friesen won the race off pit road after a no-tire call, but on the restart, Garcia moved up into the lead before the Spire duo of Busch and Hocevar powered ahead. They controlled the race until a caution flew with 35 laps to go. 

Cole Butcher crashed, while Dawson Sutton slammed the outside wall nose-first while trying to avoid it. There was a brief fire under the hood as well.

That caution put Rhodes back on the lead lap via the free pass, but it also brought into focus the timer on the race — less than 20 minutes remained on the clock, despite over 30 laps left in the scheduled distance.

Busch continues to leave over Hocevar as the race resumed, but the bottom line surged late in the race. Friesen got pushed into the lead with Stenhouse and Rhodes clearing the Spire duo as well. They then immediately went three-wide with Rhodes (who came back from a lap down) snatching the top spot.

However, his time out front was short-lived as Busch got a massive run, sweeping to the inside and reclaiming the lead with just two minutes left on the clock. Stenhouse ended up to the inside of Busch, but he couldn’t clear him and the inside line disintegrated. That cleared the way for Busch who won with a far more comfortable margin than last year’s photo finish. 

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– The Motorsport.com Team

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