WRAP-UP: Busch series win goes to Kenseth

By Dave Grayson

Matt Kenseth took the lead for good on lap 129 and came home the winner of the February 24th Stater Brothers 300 NASCAR Busch Series race at the California Speedway in Fontana. Casey Mears, Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle followed him under the checkers to complete the top five. NASCAR Nextel Cup Series drivers competing in this race, often referred to as Busch Whackers, claimed nine of the top ten places in the final finishing order.

After parking his Roush Fenway Racing Ford in the California Speedway’s Gatorade victory lane a very delighted Kenseth said “our guys are the ones who make it all good. It’s all about the cars that you drive and these guys give me great cars. The crew did a great job over the winter of making our cars even better. I think that we had the best pit stops in our Busch cars in the last year and a half.”

Enroute to his fourth win at the California Speedway, Kenseth said “we were lucky to get that last caution flag. Without it, we weren’t going to win. I knew that we had one good set of tires left and the end of the race was going to be fun. I wasn’t sure if we could beat Kyle Busch or Jeff Burton and then Casey snuck in there at the end. I knew it was going to be a good race.”

Casey Mears had a rock solid run, in the National Guard Chevrolet, with his second place finish and, after the race said “we stayed on top of the car all night. It got a little bit tight early on and then became loose with two runs to go. But my crew made some good calls and really the car was close the whole time and didn’t require any big changes. We had a car for him at the end but we had to run so hard to get by all of those guys to get into second and I think I may have run my tires off a little bit because we weren’t able to conserve them. That plus the fact that Kenseth just had a little bit too much for us tonght.” Mears also pointed that the second place finish was a great restart for the season, for the Hendrick Motorsports owned team, and a huge improvement over the season opener at Daytona where they failed to make the race.

Carl Edwards said that he had a lot of fun running the race and added “I’m really happy that Matt won. His sponsor, Dish Network, came over to my motorhome earlier today and installed a dish on it so I’m really pumped about that.”

The Stater Brothers 300 also produced the first really positive report for Toyota since the Japanese automaker joined NASCAR this year. During qualifying, Dave Blaney’s ABF U-Pack Camry ripped off a lap of 180.410 MPH to win the Bud Pole. Blaney led the first 16 laps of the race and provided Toyota their first top ten finish.