NASCAR Xfinity Series

Kyle Busch's final stop is the pits for everyone else in XFINITY win

Published Mar. 4, 2017 4:42 p.m. ET

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Joe Menzer

Kyle Busch is starting to love Atlanta Motor Speedway -- and also his XFINITY Series pit crew.

Busch won Saturday's XFINITY race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, taking the lead by beating everyone else out of the pits following the final caution of the day and then holding off the rest of the field over the closing 16 laps of the Rinnai 250. It was his second consecutive XFINITY win at the 1.5-mile track, where he also owns two career wins in the NASCAR Premier Series.

"That's two years in a row," Busch said. "It took me so long to get here and now I've won two in a row. That feels really good."

Kevin Harvick won Stage 2 and dominated much of the race in his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford, leading 64 of the first 114 laps.

But with 39 to go, shortly after a restart, Kyle Larson caught and passed Harvick. Soon thereafter, Kyle Busch passed Harvick, too.

Harvick was running third when the fifth caution of the day came out with 21 to go, and that’s when Busch’s pit crew got him to the front with a fast stop that allowed the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to be the first car off pit road.

"I can't say enough about all these guys on this team," Busch said.

Keselowski ended up second, while Larson held on for third. Harvick was fourth and XFINITY regular Elliott Sadler rounded out the top five.

It was a relatively clean race overall – but there was a dustup on Lap 2 when Ty Dillon got loose in his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevy and took a hit from the No. 11 of Blake Koch as they headed into Turn 1 on just the second lap.

Unfortunately for Koch, he got the worst of it. He ended up having to take his car behind the wall in the garage, which under NASCAR’s new rules governing wrecked cars meant he was done for the day.

Dillon made several trips to pit road without losing a lap. And although he restarted the race in 38th, he was all the way up to 12th by the end of Stage 1 — which was won by Brad Keselowski, one of nine Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series regulars who were driving in the lower-series race.

Ty Dillon ended up finishing 17th.

Busch, meanwhile, knew he was fortunate to win after his crew chief, Scott Graves, was forced to make adjustments to his car throughout the race.

"We weren't great at the beginning and we weren't great in the middle," Busch said. "Scott Graves and these guys worked on this car all day long. They really brought this NOS Energy Toyota Camry to life at the end."

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