Full Throttle

If Kyle Busch enters a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, odds are better than 50-50 he’ll win - at least where the 2009 season is concerned.

Busch led the final 50 laps of Friday night’s WinStar World Casino 350 at Texas Motor Speedway and won his fifth straight race in as many starts in the series.

The victory was Busch’s seventh in 13 starts this season, the 16th of his career and his first at the 1.5-mile track. Matt Crafton ran second, .995 seconds behind Busch at the finish. Ron Hornaday Jr. came home third and left Texas with a 197-point lead over second-place Crafton in the series standings.

Hornaday can wrap up the series championship with finishes of 22nd or better in the final two events.

Todd Bodine ran fourth and Colin Braun fifth.

“It’s an accomplishment to beat the 33 bunch (Hornaday) here, that’s for sure,” Busch said. “And we got it done today. I really hate to see the 88 (Crafton) finish second to me. I wish he could get a win.”

Crafton acknowledged it would be difficult to pick up the second victory of his career and his first of the year as long as Busch keeps entering races.

“I’m going to lock him in his motor home and take him out of the equation,” Crafton joked.

Busch passed Hornaday for the lead on Lap 98 after bumping Hornaday’s No. 33 Chevrolet on the backstretch. As Busch pulled away, Hornaday told crew chief Rick Ren to tell the No. 51 team that Talladega (where bump-drafting is commonplace) was last week.

By Lap 114, Crafton had passed Hornaday for the second position, as Hornaday fought a loose handling condition in his race truck. Crafton gradually closed on Busch, but the driver of the No. 51 Tundra maintained a lead of close to one second over his pursuer for the final 30 laps, as Crafton tried to save fuel in his No. 88 Chevrolet.

“It would be pretty awesome to get ‘em all three done here at Texas,” Busch said. “I’ve wanted to win a truck race here for a long time, so this is pretty cool, and as soon as I get a Cup win here, another one will get knocked off the list.”

Kyle came close to completing the weekend trifecta in February of this year when he won both the NCWTS and NNS races on the same day at the Auto Club Speedway and finished third in the Cup race the next day.

This is the 28th time in his career Busch has run all three series the same weekend. This is the seventh time this year and twice he won two races — at California in February and Bristol in August — without being able to get the third. In California, he won the Camping World Truck Series and the Nationwide races before finishing third in Sprint Cup.

SATURDAY BUSCH PLACED ANOTHER NOTCH IN HIS BELT as Kyle dominated on his way to his eighth Nationwide Series win of the season at Texas Motor Speedway.

From sixth on the grid, the 24-year-old grabbed the lead on lap 11 from pole-sitter Matt Kenseth and went on to control the race to the end. He briefly lost the lead due to the timing of his pitstops and during a couple of restarts, but nobody had the speed to hold him off.

The Joe Gibbs driver claimed his fourth consecutive win at Texas in NASCAR’s second-tier series, and his second of the weekend as well, having won Friday night in the Trucks after beating points leader Ron Hornaday with an impressive passing manoeuvre.

On Sunday, Busch will be looking at becoming the first driver in history to win all three NASCAR races in the same weekend, taking the start from fifth on the grid in the Sprint Cup series event.

“This track is fun; it’s fun obviously when you have good cars off course, “ Busch said. “The team did a phenomenal job for me and (crew chief) Dave (Rogers), have done a great job on the Cup side for tomorrow too, worked their butts off this weekend.

“I feel like we’ve got a decent car, not a great car, but we can contend tomorrow and if things fall our way we could do it.”

Not only was Busch on a different league on the track, but he also dominated on pit road, where his team was fastest of all, allowing him to stay up front.

His 19th NASCAR victory of the year allows him to stretch his lead in the championship even further, and with just two races remaining, he is in position to clinch his first NASCAR title next weekend at Phoenix if he manages to finish 15th or better.

Casey Mears impressed finishing second in only his first outing for more than two years in a Nationwide Series car, replacing Jeff Burton who was initially scheduled to compete but preferred to sit out today’s race after hitting the wall on Friday during Sprint Cup practice.

Jason Leffler and pole-sitter Kenseth followed, while Brad Keselowski finished fifth, narrowing the gap to 20 points to Carl Edwards in the battle for runner up honors in the championship. Kevin Harvick looked as a likely contender in the early going leading six laps, but he finished sixth in the end.

Edwards only managed a ninth-place finish, after being unable to profit much from taking new tyres during the final caution of the day with 20 laps to go.

Only 23 cars finished the race, some retiring with mechanical issue while at least nine were involved in incidents. Kasey Kahne led laps driving a Toyota for Todd Braun, but retired with suspension failure, while Joey Logano hit the wall hard after a left-rear tyre blew up on the backstretch.