Bud Shootout Review

I guess now we know why Joe Gibbs decided not to fire Kyle Busch after last seasons controversy. Wow, that was some incredible driving!

Kyle Busch took his first checkered flag in the Budweiser Shootout in dramatic fashion with a perfectly timed pass of Tony Stewart in the final 100 yards of the crash filled exhibition race. Shootout rookie Marcos Ambrose took 3rd with Brad Keselowski and Denny Hamlin rounding out the top five. 

The aforementioned crash fest was sure to include Busch himself, twice, as all but two of the 25 entrants suffered some sort of damage throughout the 75-lap race. The first "big one", as most wrecks at Daytona and Talladega are called due to their nature of collecting huge amounts of cars, occurred on lap 9 when David Ragan made contact with Paul Menard sending both up into the wall and collecting Michael Waltrip, Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin, Jeff Burton, Matt Kenseth, and Juan Pablo Montoya. Jeff Gordon made his first of two impressive escapes in the race by squeezing between Kenseth and Montoya after a crash looked inevitable.

"Big one" number two happened on lap 56 after Ambrose hit Joey Logano's right rear (in similar fashion to Ragan hitting Menard) and gathering up Kevin Harvick, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Martin Truex Jr., and Kenseth for the second time. Harvick was on fire, but refused to obey team communications to stop and wait for a fire truck because his brakes were gone, and took his car to the garage instead.  Once again, Gordon made another elusive move to avoid this wreck, but his luck would run dry shortly after.

With two laps remaining, Gordon was in 3rd behind Stewart and Busch and tried to make a move around Busch going into the 3rd turn. He hit Busch in the right rear (the common denominator in all 3 wrecks) and Busch began to drift. Gordon believed he would spin out fully and moved up the track to avoid him, only to run out of room and run into Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch, also collecting Jamie McMurray and Carl Edwards. The impact of Gordon hitting the wall and being hit by Johnson sent Gordon sliding on his side for a few hundred yards before his car dug into the track and sent him barrel rolling down the track in a spectacular crash. 

Kyle was able to save his car from hitting anything (the second time that night he saved his car, the first time after nearly being spun by Johnson) and hit pit road for a quick repair and new tires. 

Though the night had been spent pack drafting, which was the old way racing used to happen at Daytona before the infamous "2 car tandem drafts" became the way to go, Kyle was able to find Stewart and hook up in a two car draft on the final lap. The pair slingshotted around Ambrose on the backstretch leaving only the two of them to settle who wins. Busch perfectly timed his move and beat Stewart to the line with a margin of .013 seconds, extremely impressive considering Busch had some significant damage to his #18 Toyota.

The revert back to pack racing excited the drivers despite the multiple wrecks and all seemed to be looking forward to this weekend's Daytona 500.

All I'll say is, that was one hell of an appetizer!