Busch captures 52nd career Cup victory with Phoenix win

[March 11, 2019]  Kyle Busch easily could have laid claim to being the top Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver not driving a Team Penske Ford through the first three races of the 2019 season. Following Sunday's victory at ISM Raceway near Phoenix, Busch can now lay claim to being the series' top driver. Period.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver dominated in Arizona, leading a race-best 177 of 312 laps in winning the TicketGuardian 500 -- a race that began with Busch being the only driver in Cup to have notched top-10 finishes in the previous three events.

The victory was his 52nd in Cup and it gave him a weekend sweep at ISM as he won Saturday's Xfinity Series race. It also gave him 199 victories over NASCAR's top three series and two straight wins in Arizona as he won at the one-mile oval last November.

After the race, Busch was asked about the significance of winning 200 times in NASCAR.

"Not for me to worry about," he said. "It's for everybody else to discuss and talk about and argue over and debate."

As happy as Busch was with the win, he also gave himself some grief because it could easily have given him a second straight weekend sweep.

"Man...," said Busch, who had to settle for finishing third last week in his hometown of Las Vegas after being penalized for speeding. "God this makes last weekend feel so much stupider. Man, I wish we could have swept last week, too. It would have been awesome to start out this year two weekend sweeps in a row. But we'll just take what we got here today."

With the win, Busch joins teammate Denny Hamlin and Penske drivers Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano as drivers having won races and securing berths in the season-ending Playoffs.

Martin Truex Jr. of Joe Gibbs Racing finished second and Ryan Blaney third.

Aric Almirola of Stewart-Haas Racing and Hamlin rounded out the top five.

To get the victory, Busch had to track down Blaney of Team Penske -- who led 95 laps -- over the final 50 laps. He made the pass for the lead with 16 laps to go, adeptly managed his depleted fuel cell and then drove to the victory.

Monster Energy NASCARCup Series driver Kyle Busch (18) leads during the TicketGuardian 500 at ISM Raceway. Mandatory Credit: Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports

"You've got to race hard first, and then you got to worry about fuel afterwards," he said of the final laps. "Once I got to Blaney, I was able to kind of save a little bit and try to take care of my tires for the rest of the traffic I had to get through."

At the end, Truex had moved past Blaney into second place and finished 1.2-seconds back.

Team Penske's run of two straight victories came to an end at ISM. Brad Keselowski, who won at Atlanta two weeks ago, suffered a couple of scrapes with walls and finished 19th. Last week's winner at Las Vegas, Joey Logano, finished 10th.

Blaney said hopes to him to give Penske three straight wins came up a couple gallons short.

"I was kind of riding, trying to save tires and save gas, and they were telling me we were really close on gas," he said. "I think he was kind of riding back there, too. I think they knew what kind of situation I was in. I started to get real tight and I got to lapped cars and I was done. After we got passed for the lead, it was just full on fuel-saving mode."

Pole-sitter Blaney started from the pole and led 46 of the first 75 laps to win Stage 1. Busch led all 75 laps in winning Stage 2.

--Field Level Media

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