Kyle Busch took the lead late and didn’t look back on his way to winning the Pala Casino 400 Sunday at Auto Club Speedway in its last race as a two-mile track.
The win marked the 19th straight year in which Kyle Busch won a race in the Cup Series, breaking a tie for most consecutive years with a win, which he held with “The King” — Richard Petty.
“There’s not very many records that you can beat that Richard Petty has,” Busch said. “Certainly that was one that I set early on a long, long time ago that I always wanted to achieve.”
It was Busch’s first win on pavement in almost two years — his 2022 win came in the Bristol dirt race — but competitors don’t think his success this season should shock anyone.
“Why is anyone surprised?” Chase Elliott said. “Kyle’s one of the best race car drivers ever to do this and that didn’t change overnight. So I’m not surprised, and anybody who is should rethink their NASCAR knowledge.”
For most of the day’s running, it was a well-behaved race. It lost its composure early in the second stage. Three cautions came out in quick succession to start the stage, culminating in a ten car pile-up on a restart.
After that incident, however, the cautions dried up. There was only one more caution for cause following the crash, when Ty Dillon’s No. 77 car seemed to lose power.
With that the one caution in the third stage, the race ended on a 55-lap green-flag run. Busch spent much of the run behind Ross Chastain (No. 1) but opened up a lead of greater than three seconds after getting ahead in the pit cycle.
Getting ahead of Chastain on the track, however, was a struggle for Busch throughout the race.
“There was a moment there when I ran Ross Chastain down the first time and I got to his bumper and I was trying to make a move to get by him and I just couldn’t figure it out,” Busch said. “I about crashed a few times, and I was just hanging on at the end of that stage and then we were able to make some more adjustments to it to get it better on the long run.”
The race marked Kyle Busch’s third race with Richard Childress Racing, having left Joe Gibbs Racing after 15 years. Busch himself was surprised at how quickly he’s adapted to his new team, but they’ve been on an upswing since the start of the Next Gen era last year.
It’s the second year in a row the No. 8 car has been strong around Auto Club Speedway. Last year, Tyler Reddick won the first two stages before puncturing a tire late and losing a lap to the rest of the pack.
Although they were strong last year, Busch’s crew didn’t take much from last year’s set-up for this year’s package.
“Last year when we got here, we might have been a little ahead of the curve or a little more aggressive on things … obviously it showed when we blew our left rear last year,” Busch’s crew chief Randall Burnett said. “The setup today was completely different than it was a year ago, and that just shows how much we’ve evolved with this car and how much we’ve learned in a year.”
Whatever they learned this year won’t have much of an impact on next year’s race in Southern California with Auto Club Speedway due to be dismantled soon.
“It’s a sad day for me to see this racetrack be in its last race being a two-mile configuration,” Busch said. “Glad I was able to win the final run here.”
NASCAR will stay west of its roots for next weekend’s race in Las Vegas.