{"id":9179,"date":"2021-07-11T21:38:50","date_gmt":"2021-07-12T01:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=9179"},"modified":"2022-07-22T12:09:46","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T16:09:46","slug":"kurt-busch-out-duels-kyle-at-atlanta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2021\/07\/11\/kurt-busch-out-duels-kyle-at-atlanta\/","title":{"rendered":"Kurt Busch out-duels Kyle at Atlanta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What a great send-off to a fantastic racing surface.<\/p>\n<p>And I don&#8217;t just mean the piece\u00a0<strong>Kurt Busch<\/strong> got from the track.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Kurt gets a piece of the track! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/k9j8x3gY2h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/k9j8x3gY2h<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jeff Gluck (@jeff_gluck) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jeff_gluck\/status\/1414377250250797059?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 12, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The elder statesman of the NASCAR Cup Series locked himself into the playoffs with his <a href=\"https:\/\/racing.ap.org\/article\/kurt-busch-holds-brother-kyle-atlanta-motor-speedway\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fourth career victory at Atlanta Motor Speedway<\/a>. It&#8217;s his 33rd career Cup Series victory. Which moves him into a tie with Fireball Roberts for 25th on NASCAR&#8217;s all-time wins list.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, it was the first time since Richmond in 2015 that he won a race in which he led the most laps (he led 144 of 260 laps).<\/p>\n<h2>Kurt Busch out-duels Kyle at Atlanta<\/h2>\n<p>And it wasn&#8217;t thanks to a lucky caution in the closing laps, like helped him at Kentucky Speedway in 2019, he chased down brother\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2020\/10\/28\/kyle-busch-fuel-winless-drought-texas\/\" target=\"_self\"><strong>Kyle Busch<\/strong><\/a>, who exited pit road ahead of him with under 50 laps to go, with a strong car on the bottom.<\/p>\n<p>And some help from\u00a0<strong>Ross Chastain<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Shake and bake! Shake and bake! Yeah, and the 42, he did his job as a teammate,&#8221; Kurt Busch said. &#8220;Ross is going to get a little flak for it, but that\u2019s what it takes to be a good teammate at the right moment, so I couldn\u2019t be more proud of Ross Chastain.<\/p>\n<p>Kyle Busch stalled out behind Chastain in Turn 3 with 25 laps to go. Kurt Busch reeled him in and edged him at the line to retake the lead. Then he completed the overtake down the backstretch.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I had everything I had early in the run and then just smoked it behind the 42 (Ross Chastain), obviously,&#8221; Kyle Busch said. &#8220;It shows you what kind of driver he is.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Thus, for the next 15 laps, it was a duel between two of the best wheelmen in NASCAR. Kurt Busch hugged the bottom, while Kyle Busch hugged the wall. While the latter kept it within a second for many laps, he couldn&#8217;t overcome the disadvantage of dirty air and finished 1.237 seconds behind brother Kurt.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&quot;fucking piece of shit front end. God dammit.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>18<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Matt Weaver (@MattWeaverRA) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MattWeaverRA\/status\/1414358012454744079?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 11, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just tried to fight hard after that when I got passed and had one valiant effort off of (turn) two,&#8221; he said, &#8220;but didn\u2019t have enough momentum to drag him down and make him go high in (turns) three and four, and after that the tires were smoked.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The No. 1 (Kurt Busch) was definitely better than us today. I just thought I had him. And we did. But racing just didn\u2019t play out that way for us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Combined with Kyle Busch&#8217;s 91 laps, the Busch brothers led a combined 235 of the 260 laps.<\/p>\n<p>The younger Busch leaves Atlanta third in points, just 97 behind teammate\u00a0<strong>Denny Hamlin<\/strong>. The elder Busch leaves 14th in points.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TOP IMAGE: Sean Gardner\/Getty Images<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a great send-off to a fantastic racing surface. And I don&#8217;t just mean the piece\u00a0Kurt Busch got from the track. Kurt gets a piece of the track! pic.twitter.com\/k9j8x3gY2h &mdash; Jeff Gluck (@jeff_gluck) July 12, 2021 The elder statesman of the NASCAR Cup Series locked himself into the playoffs with his fourth career victory at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":9181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,1664,3],"tags":[513,353,261,14,1434,371,647],"class_list":["post-9179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nascar","category-nascar-cup-series","category-news","tag-atlanta-motor-speedway","tag-kurt-busch","tag-kyle-busch","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-2021","tag-nascar-cup-series","tag-quaker-state-400"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}