Kyle Busch survived five different restarts over the last 40 laps, including an overtime restart, to cap off a dominant performance and win the Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway. Busch's win is his third of the season, tying him with William Byron for the most wins in Cup in 2023, and is also the 63rd of his all-time great career.
After starting from the pole, Busch led 121 of 243 laps in what turned into a very long day of racing. Despite being the shortest race on the Cup Series schedule, Sunday's race was prolonged due to three different red flags -- including one for lightning in the area that lasted over an hour and a half -- and 11 cautions. Despite the start-stop nature of the day, Busch was able to keep the lead late in the going thanks largely to a series of well-executed restarts.
Busch's decisive victory marked his first win from the pole since the 2018 Coca-Cola 600, and it also gave him three wins in a season for the 11th time in his Cup career and the first time since his last championship in 2019. It was a day and a weekend of few -- if any -- flaws, leading to Busch channeling his inner Al Davis after taking the checkered flag.
"That was pretty awesome," Busch told Fox Sports. "To sit on the pole, lead a lot of laps, and have my guys do such a great job today was pretty phenomenal for us. Great for RCR. Just win, baby."
A good amount of the on-track trouble in Sunday's race was attributable to a series of brake rotor failures, as several drivers had their days come to an end due to brake rotor explosions at the end of the front straightaway that sent them into the Turn 1 wall. The first victim would be Carson Hocevar, who saw an impressive drive up to 16th in his Cup debut end when he socked the wall due to a brake rotor failure. Tyler Reddick would end up suffering the same fate, as would 23XI Racing teammate Bubba Wallace with five laps to go.
The most spectacular failure and subsequent wreck of the day went to Noah Gragson. Unlike the other three who were able to keep their cars up high on the racetrack on corner entry, Gragson would end up spinning to the bottom of the track before shooting back up, leading to a violent driver's side collision with the Turn 1 wall.
"I hit the brakes into one and then the car sat down and blew the left front brake rotor I think out of it. At that point you're like, 'S--- what do I do?'", Gragson told Fox Sports. "So I tried to hook it through the infield -- I've seen guys do it at Pocono -- obviously once I went through the infield I'm like, 'That's the wrong thing to do,' but it's that or go head-on in the fence. I tried to scrub a little bit of speed (off)."
It was only a couple of weeks ago that Ross Chastain was both the hottest driver in NASCAR and the series' top performer, as he enjoyed a comfortable 31-point lead at the top of the regular season standings following Kansas. But that lead is now no more.
Despite running in the top 10 for much of the afternoon and scoring stage points, Chastain would fade outside the top 20 late in the going and finish 22nd, giving him his third straight finish outside the top 20. Chastain had entered Gateway trying to defend his point lead with just eight points separating the top four in the standings, but he has now slid all the way from a one-point lead atop the standings back to fifth, 29 points back of new points leader Ryan Blaney.
Blaney now has a 13-point lead over William Byron as the race for the regular season championship begins to come into focus, with Kevin Harvick (-22) and Martin Truex Jr. (-23) also in the picture.
While some of Chastain's recent slide can be attributed to his aggressive driving seemingly coming to a head at Kansas and Darlington, Sunday's race was not without incident as Chastain ended up spinning Michael McDowell on a restart to begin Stage 2. Despite backing into the outside wall, McDowell's team would make repairs and get their driver back to the front through a series of two-tire pit calls, ultimately coming home with a ninth-place finish.
"World Wide Technology Raceway" became a bit of a misnomer during Sunday's race, as technological issues were an underlying theme of the day. A power issue at the racetrack temporarily knocked out the FS1 television broadcast from the track as well as the MRN radio broadcast and NASCAR's own in-car cameras, leading to some momentary disturbances for race fans. For race teams, meanwhile, a local issue with AT&T fiber left many teams up and down pit road without internet access -- meaning they lost access to SMT and other essential race data, and their ability to communicate with their war rooms back at their race shops was also compromised.
However, those problems paled in comparison to a frightening moment on a narrow pit road for the No. 43 Legacy Motor Club team. During a round of pit stops, Thomas Hatcher -- the front tire changer for Erik Jones -- got tangled up with his own tire carrier as Jones' car came to a stop. While initial reports were that Hatcher was hit by a car, it is unclear if Hatcher was hit by the No. 3 of Austin Dillon or by Jones as he was coming to a stop.
Per the team, Hatcher was described as awake and alert after being taken off pit road via ambulance and transported to a local hospital.
After passing through the Gateway to the West, NASCAR goes all the way to the West Coast and Wine Country for the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway next Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET on Fox.
A vintage Rowdy performance is going to get Kyle Busch his third win of 2023! Busch wins at Gateway to earn the 63rd win of his Cup career!
1 - #8 - Kyle Busch
2 - #11 - Denny Hamlin
3 - #22 - Joey Logano
4 - #5 - Kyle Larson
5 - #19 - Martin Truex Jr.
6 - #12 - Ryan Blaney
7 - #99 - Daniel Suarez
8 - #24 - William Byron
9 - #34 - Michael McDowell
10 - #4 - Kevin Harvick
Busch clears Larson for the lead, and Hamlin and Larson are now racing for second. White flag!
If Kyle Busch is going to get his third win of the season, he's going to have to survive overtime. Here we go!
We are headed to overtime, and Kyle Busch is going to have to put together another one of the restarts that has allowed him to keep the lead late in this race.
What's working against him is that in the six races that have gone to overtime this year, only one driver who led at the end of regulation has ended up winning. Busch himself was on the other side of that in the Daytona 500.
Looks like Wallace had a brake rotor explode just like his teammate Tyler Reddick did earlier. Wallace was running 11th, but his streak of top five finishes will come to an end after a excellent month of May.
CALAMITY CORNER STRIKES AGAIN! Bubba Wallace has hit the wall in Turn 1, and the 11th caution of the day is out!
Busch's lead is now up to one second on Larson. Five laps to go.
Best battle up front is from seventh on back. Harvick, Truex, McDowell, Byron and Wallace all in that group as Busch's lead continues to grow.
Big gaggle of cars from about 19th on back all racing hard for position. That all goes on as Kyle Busch has opened up a half second lead on Kyle Larson with 10 to go.
Green flag back out with 15 to go. We'll see if we can run the rest of the way under green.
Larson gets loose off Turn 2 and it's going to let Busch get away cleanly with the lead.
Red flag has been lifted and we're back under caution.
