After a dominant performance in the Pocono 400 at Pocono Raceway on Sunday, Kyle Busch took his fourth checkered flag of the 2019 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season to lay claim to the honor of winningest driver in the first 14 races of the year. Sunday’s win was Busch’s second-straight victory at Pocono and his third in the last four races at the track.
"It's cool to get a win; cool to get a win at Pocono again with Rowdy Nation out there supporting us,” Busch said.
Brad Keselowski finished second.
“I think we had a pretty good Wabash Ford,” Keselowski said “We wanted a little bit more to be able to pass everybody, but you had to be so much faster that you just try to execute the best you can and hope things fall the right way. They fell decent, just not good enough to win today.”
Kyle Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Erik Jones finished third. Chase Elliott was fourth, and Clint Bowyer rounded out the top-five.
“We had a pretty good car,” Bowyer said. “We had a third to fifth-place car. That is about what we had, and we did a good job finishing with what we had. We are just giving up way too many stage points. We have to figure out how to get some stage points. That is all we had today.”
Busch’s latest win broke him from a tie he shared with fellow-three-race winners Keselowski and JGR teammate Martin Truex Jr. Truex, after winning the previous weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway and three of the five races immediately preceding Sunday’s event, retired early at Pocono with a blown engine just before lap 100.
“We just lost an engine, there. Dropped a cylinder down the backstretch, and figured I might as well pit,” Truex said. “I thought maybe it was a possibility we were out of gas, but it started smoking out of the pipes and shut off. Tough day. TRD [Toyota Racing Development] does a great job of building engines, and obviously, they’re fast. Probably a fluke deal. I’m not sure, but we’ll go back to look at it. Frustrating day.”
Busch’s win Sunday also was his 55th-career Cup Series win, tying him with NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace for ninth on the all-time wins list.
Kyle Larson won both of the 50-lap stages that made up the first 100 laps of the of the race. But Larson hit the wall and fell of the pace in the final 10 laps of the 160-lap race.
After pole sitter William Byron led until a lap-20 competition caution, Larson took the lead with a two-tire pit stop during the caution and remained up front for the remainder of the opening stage.
Busch led most of the second stage, taking the lead on the restart at the beginning of the stage after pitting in the closing laps of the opening stage and staying out during the caution between the two stages.
With varying pit strategies through three cautions in the second stage and green-flag stops for some in the closing laps of the stage, Larson was back up front in the final laps of stage two for his second stage win.
Busch was up front again for the restart at the beginning of the third 60-lap stage of the race after staying out at the end of the second stage. He led most of the remainder of the race. He gave up the lead early in a cycle of green-flag pit stops that began around lap 120. When the cycle completed with Daniel Hemric’s stop 20 laps later, Busch was back up front. By race’s end his laps-led tally was 79.
“I passed one guy on the outside in turn three, and that was the only guy I needed to pass, I guess,” Busch said. “It was hard otherwise. We kind of got stuck in traffic back, there, a little bit earlier in the race. We were about fifth or sixth and couldn’t really do anything. But, overall, my guys on pit road were awesome. Got some spots there.”
Larson and Byron were the only other two drivers to lead more than 10 laps, with Larson leading 35 laps and Byron 25.
Kevin Harvick was second to Busch before the cycle of stops, but he suffered a pit-road penalty for an uncontrolled tire. Harvick fell farther behind when he lost power steering. As a result of his late-race problems, he finished off the lead lap.
The first 100 laps were littered by cautions, with the yellow flag waving seven times, including the two cautions that marked the ends of the first two stages and the early-race competition caution that was scheduled because of overnight rain.
The yellow waved only once in the remaining laps. That caution didn’t come until the final 15 laps of the race when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. spun, resulting in a restart inside the last 10 laps.
“That was a hard lick,” Stenhouse said. “We actually got the car a little bit better, but we still weren’t very good all day. We made it better and better and had a little contact early and cut a right-rear tire. We were trying to battle back. We were gaining on it. I feel like we could have maybe got three more spots before the end of the race, but the tire let go going into [turn] two. That is about the worst place that can happen. That was a bummer. All in all, we will just try to figure out how to get our cars better here. Us and the 6 [Ryan Newman] were struggling all day.”
JGR teammates Busch and Jones held both front-row spots for the last restart.
Finishing sixth through 10th were Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, Daniel Suarez, Byron and Aric Almirola.
