Kyle Busch celebrated his 24th birthday in style by sweeping the weekend at Richmond, winning his third Sprint Cup race of the year a
day after taking victory in the Nationwide Series event. Busch emerged as a strong contender for victory after he pitted for the last time during the eleventh of an event-record fifteen caution periods. Making the most of fresh rubber and without having to worry about saving fuel unlike most of those ahead of him, he got rivals one by one until catching up with leader Jeff Gordon. Following the penultimate restart he got by the Hendrick driver and thanks to his superior pace and some slower cars not making it easy for his pursuers, he was able to build a big enough lead to coast towards his fifteenth Sprint Cup series career win, becoming only the second driver in NASCAR history to win a race on his birthday. “It was an awesome win for us,” said Busch. “We’ve struggled for four weeks and we hadn’t finished the way we wanted to but we made it happen here tonight. “We needed to get out and get a long run and those guys had to chase us back and they couldn’t really catch us. It really worked out. (Crew chief) Steve (Addington) made a great race call there on when to pit and take four (new) tyres and we were able to stay out front from then on.” Busch actually won three races during the weekend, as on Thursday night he had beaten his Gibbs team-mate Denny Hamlin in a late-model charity race at Southside Speedway, just 15 miles away from Richmond International Raceway. Finishing second was Tony Stewart who was among those taking four new tyres in one of the late cautions. At one point he seemed to be in hot pursuit of Busch after getting by those cars struggling for grip, but a much-expected caution didn’t arrive and he was unable to get close to his former team-mate.
Jeff Burton finished third on a similar strategy to Stewart, recovering well from an early incident with Dale Earnhardt Jr when he ended up hitting the wall on lap 212. Ryan Newman finished fourth rounding out the best race of the year thus far for Stewart-Haas Racing, followed by veteran Mark Martin.