Full Throttle

Kurt Busch won at Texas Motor Speedway, taking over the race lead with 21/2 laps left when his younger brother Kyle suddenly slowed down on the backstretch after leading 232 laps.

Kyle going for a first ever sweep of weekend events had his bid for “trips” end with a cough, gurgle and burp as the Toyota ran out of fuel.

After pitting on Lap 269 of 334, Kyle was leading and trying to conserve fuel when he ran out on the backstretch on Lap 331. “I’m out! I’m out—coming to you!” he radioed to crew chief Dave Rogers, who had replaced Steve Addington on the pit box after last Sunday’s race at Talladega.

The reality is when you’re out of the champ race as the 18 was you gamble, that’s what Kyle’s new crew chef did.

And lost.

Speaking of lost, Jimmie Johnson’s a 38th-place finish cost the 48 111 points of a 184-point lead going into the event to Mark Martin, who finished fourth and trails Johnson by 73 points with two races left.

My vote for the pitcrew of the race is the 48 crew. They did a weeks worth of work, aided by the 5 and 24 crews, in a bit over an hour and 129 laps. In the process they gained 15 points over what a 43rd place finish would have awards they.

15 points may not make a difference considering Johnson and his closest pursuer Mark Martin are the two drivers that possess the best and highest finishing record at Phoenix.

It would take a “Miracle in the Desert” and that seems far from likely.

Back to fuel mileage for a moment.

Denny Hamlin took full advantage of Kyle’s problem and finished second. His margin behind Kurt Busch was 25.686 seconds the largest margin of victory in a NASCAR Sprint Cup race since the inception of electronic scoring in May 1993.

Marcos Ambrose turned his 19th place starting position into one of the better drives of the day staying in the top ten all day until fuel issues hit the 47.

Ambrose was running second with two laps to go when his Toyota ran out of fuel, forcing the former V8 Supercar champion to settle for 15th position.

The former V8 Supercar champion had been informed by his crew chief to conserve fuel for a top 10 finish but barked back that he wanted to win when instructed to ease off.

“We gave it a shot,” he said. “We came up short by a lap and a bit. We were close on fuel but if you get within a lap you have to have a go.

“We only needed half a gallon and that was the difference between second and 15th.”

“We’ve had some bad races as we’ve tried these new things and worked on them but now we’re finally getting our heads around it,” Ambrose said.

“It was a good night and we were genuinely competitive all day. The pace we had and what we’ve learned here will be really good for our 1.5 mile program moving on from here.”

Behin Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth ran third, followed by Martin, Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart. Those were the only six drivers to finish on the lead lap, the fewest since six cars finished on the lead lap in June 2008 at Dover.

A.J. Allmendinger raced the first Richard Petty owned Ford in forty years to 10th place. The last Petty owed Ford raced during the 1969 season and coincidentally Richard won his 100th race at Talladega that year in his Petty Blue Ford Torino Talladega.

SIDE NOTES: Martin Truex, Jr. raced to a 14th place finish gaining 121 points. He, and EGR won’t be keeping all the points. The Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Boats Chevy failed to meet minimum height requirements. Expect penalties to be announced early this week.

So much for the Pat Tryson and Kurt Busch playing out the string, to use baseball terminology, after Tryson announced few weeks ago he was leaving Penske.

He may be leaving but Tryson is going out a winner.

Brad Keselowski was the victim of a Lap 175 crash and finished 35th in his debut in the No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge.

Kurt Busch made a $1 million winner of Michael McGee, the race sponsor’s American Worker of the Year. McGee picked Busch to win in a random drawing on Saturday.