Kyle Busch won his second consecutive NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Atlanta in a side-by-side finish Saturday afternoon.
Driving the No.7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, Busch captured the checkered flag in the Fr8 208 truck race after battling back off of Turn 4 to pass 2nd place finisher Stewart Friesen.
“I was trying to hold that inside lane back,” Busch said. “Each time I kept crawling forward, I kept trying to pull it back and then get the outside lane to push forward.”
The last few laps were a battle for the top spot. Each lap, the top 10 were constantly changing. With two laps to go, Friesen, driving No.52 Halmar Friesen Toyota, came right behind Busch and took the first place spot for a lap. However, with only a few more feet until the finish line, Busch edged out Friesen.
The win is Busch’s 8th Truck Series win at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
“It was cool just to be racing up front again,” Friesen said. “Just to be up front racing where we belong and racing for wins, I mean you see how it goes here.”
Tyler Ankrum, driving McAnally Hilgemann Racing Chevrolet finished third, followed by Bayley Curry, driving No.44 Niece Motorsports Chevrolet. Chandler Smith, driving No.38 Front Row Motorsports Ford, rounded out the top 5
“It was pretty dicey there towards the end and a good show for the fans,” Busch said. “It was great to finish a superspeedway race.”
Stage 1 progressed quietly. Connor Mosack led the pack for the majority of the opening stage until the very end when Jake Wood took the lead and the stage.
Early in Stage 2 Busch controlled the field. This is where the race began picking up and two lanes of racing battled back and forth. Late in the stage, Corey Heim ran out of gas in his No.11 Tricon Garage Toyota. He would finish 23rd overall.
The first on-track incident occurred in Stage 3. With 60 laps left, Rajah Caruth spun off of Turn 4. The wreck collected William Sawalich ending his day, and put other drivers, including Andres Perez de Lara, significantly behind.
The other major accident was between Mosack and Frankie Muniz with 28 laps left.
“I’m going to work really hard the next two off weeks,” Ankrum said. ”I feel like we were definitely not as good as we were last time we were here.”
After a month-long break, the Truck Series returns to racing on March 22 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.