15 extra horsepower or not, Kyle Busch -- or more precisely Joe Gibbs Racing -- is still the Nationwide Series competition's biggest threat, as they showed Saturday night at Indianapolis' O'Reilly Raceway Park.
Busch led 197 of 200 laps to win the Kroger 200 Benefiting Riley Hospital for Children at the half-mile flat short track just five miles from the site of Sunday's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.
Busch, as well as the rest of the Toyota teams who have combined to win 14 of the series' races in 2008, faced a rule change this week from NASCAR that dropped the the manufacturer's horsepower by about 15 ponies. The rule change will likely even out the playing field when the series visits faster and bigger tracks, but at ORP the horsepower loss was a blessing in disguise for the Toyota bunch.
"I really got to thank my competitors for doing the complaining they did, because we were able to have good traction control all night long," said Busch, inferring that the loss of horsepower allows his car to not spin the tires getting off the corner.Towards the end of the race, Roush Fenway Racing's young gun Colin Braun was briefly closing on Busch, but Busch was able to stretch his lead to from 3 car lengths to 10 car lengths thanks to getting a good run off the corner.
Mike Bliss, who has quite an impressive record in Silver Crown and Midget cars at ORP, finished third in his No. 1 car despite spinning to bring out the first caution of the race.
Carl Edwards undoubtedly had the fastest car in the field, but an early problem took him out of contention in the short 200-lap race. That problem was a faulty oil cooler that started to leak, forcing the team to make repairs and causing him to go multiple laps down at one point.
Late in the event though, Edwards had successfully raced his way back to the lead lap -- including passing Busch multiple times before a caution would wave -- but ran out of time and settled for an 11th place finish.
Hometown boy Bryan Clauson from Noblesville, Ind. had quite the cheering section along the frontstretch prior to the race, but his No. 40 Chip Ganassi Dodge was swept up in a wreck and wound up 36 laps down in 32nd.
