CONCORD, N.C. – Kyle Busch made Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series history with his third-straight stage win in Sunday night’s 59th annual Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Busch became the first driver to win three stages in a single race by taking his third green-and-white checkered flag of the night, crossing the line 2.644 seconds ahead of Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Erik Jones.
It was Busch’s fifth stage win of the season.
“We’ve gone through some change on-track here, but our car has continually been turning better and better,” noted Busch. “We’ve been keeping up with it that way and making some adjustments as we’ve needed to, feels good to lead all these laps, but we need to go get that checkered flag. Anywhere we put it we’re really quick, so we’ve just gotta keep this roll going.”
The third stage kicked off at lap 208 with Busch and teammate Denny Hamlin on the front row, and Busch rocketed back into clean air from the outside lane before asserting his dominance once again.
Busch opened up three-quarters of a second in just two laps, leaving Hamlin chasing in his tire tracks.
A caution slowed the pace on lap 227 for a spinning Gray Gaulding, but did nothing to slow Busch’s impressive pace. He won the race off pit road over Hamlin and resumed command when the green flag waved next on the 231st round, but had his first real challenge of the night start to develop as Kyle Larson bolted from fourth to second on the outside and began to pressure the No. 18 Toyota.
Busch was not fazed, however, and stretched his margin to 3.8 seconds over Larson before another solo spin brought the yellow flag back out, this time for Chris Buescher on lap 258.
Again, Busch and Harvick led the field back to green after pit stops, but this time it was Jamie McMurray who shot out like a cannon from the high side, catapulting up to second after a crossover pass of Hamlin down the backstretch at lap 265.
However, his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Larson tapped the outside wall while running fourth and went for a long spin eight laps later, bringing out the caution but surprisingly not making any major contact and continuing on at the tail end of the lead lap.
Racing resumed with 23 to go, but it only took a single lap before the pace was slowed again as Ryan Blaney’s ailing engine finally let go in a huge fireball entering turn one. Blaney skidded to a stop in the grass at the bottom of the second corner, escaped his race car quickly and walked away.
That left both Busch brothers – Kyle and Kurt – on the front row for a 15-lap dash to the stage break, but it was Kyle Busch pulling away to the green-and-white checkered flag, just as he’d done all night long.
Erik Jones came from fourth to second on the final restart of the stage, with Brad Keselowski rising to third after being a lap down at the end of the second stage and Kurt Busch fading back to fourth.
McMurray completed the top five, ahead of Denny Hamlin, Kasey Kahne, Martin Truex Jr., Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Ryan Newman.
Jimmie Johnson crossed the line 11th after running eighth with two laps to go in the stage. Larson rallied back to 12th following his earlier spin.
