Busch becomes the first driver to secure a berth in the championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway in three weeks’ time, with no pressure over the two remaining races in the Round of 8 as he prepares to race for his second series championship.
“Man, we weren’t the best all day, but we put ourselves in the right spots there at the end and it all worked out, somehow,” Busch said. “There was chaos ensuing and none of it was our fault … we just came out on the right end of the stick.”
“This is huge for us as a team,” he added. “We can go out there and race for wins … and try to get more, of course, and just let everybody else have to worry. We don’t want to give them a chance to breath and get their heads on their shoulders going into that week at Homestead. We’re not about to let up.”
Truex had a shot to win his first-career short track race, but said afterwards he wasn’t going to wreck Busch for the win.
“I try to race a certain way, because that’s just how I race, and that’s how I raced tonight,” said Truex. “There was a hole there, I got in it and thought I had a shot at beating him fair and square (in a drag race to the finish line), but I just couldn’t get the power down off of (Turn) 4 to be able to get there.”
“It never crossed my mind to knock him out of the way. I know he hit the 11 (Hamlin) out of the way, and I’m sure that’s going to be a sore subject for those two, but I wasn’t going to do that. A lot of guys made enemies tonight and we didn’t. We’ll just keep doing our thing, racing our races and move on to next week. Texas should be a great track for us, so hopefully we can continue to do there what we’ve done all year long (on intermediate tracks).”
Clint Bowyer crossed the line in third, his best finish since back-to-back runner-up efforts at Sonoma and Daytona in the middle of the summer, with Keselowski coming home fourth as the final car unscathed in the last-lap carnage.
Kevin Harvick spun across the line to complete the top five, followed by Trevor Bayne, Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, Matt Kenseth and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. — driving a replica of Buddy Baker’s “Gray Ghost” paint scheme that won the 1980 Daytona 500 — finished 11th in his final Martinsville start, just ahead of teammate and nine-time Martinsville winner Jimmie Johnson, who struggled all day and could only muster a 12th-place result.
Leaving Martinsville, Truex holds down the second spot in the playoff standings behind Busch, 67 points above the cut line.
Keselowski is third and 29 markers clear, while Harvick holds the fourth and final spot and is only three points ahead of Johnson.
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series returns to action on Nov. 5 at Texas Motor Speedway, with the running of the AAA Texas 500.
Full race results can be viewed on the next page…
