Kyle Busch wins at Atlanta, clinches Chase berth

HAMPTON, Ga. -- Kyle Busch proved emphatically Sunday night that he knows what to do with a lead when he gets it. 

By the time he grabbed the top spot at Atlanta Motor Speedway for the first time, however, the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup picture had changed dramatically. 

Busch claimed the trophy for the AdvoCare 500, beating Joey Logano to the finish line by .740 seconds. Locked into a top-10 spot in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Busch added three bonus points to his Chase-opening total with his fourth win of the season. 

The win was Busch’s second at Atlanta and the 28th of his prolific career, tying him with Rex White for 23rd on the career victory list. And he did it in a car he labeled "a joke" early in the race. 

"It was at first," Busch said frankly. "That’s why we race 500 miles, I guess. Man, I don’t know where it came from but these guys -- (crew chief) Dave Rogers -- the guys never gave up. They made some really good calls, and I commend them. It was their race today."

For other Chase contenders, Sunday night’s race was a mixture of perseverance and perverse fortune. Beyond that, for reigning Cup champion Brad Keselowski, it was an unmitigated disaster. 

Logano’s strong second-place finish gained the driver of the No. 22 Penske Racing Ford two spots to eighth in the standings and gave him a 16-point cushion over 11th-place Jeff Gordon with only next Saturday’s Richmond race remaining before the Chase field is set. 

Driving with a broken wrist, Martin Truex Jr. ran third, but his hold on a Wild Card berth in the Chase remains tenuous. With two-time winner Kasey Kahne holding the first Wild Card spot, Truex has a five-point lead over Ryan Newman, who came home fifth Sunday, for the second berth. 

Kurt Busch surged back into the top 10 -- and hence a provisional Chase spot -- with a fourth-place result, but Busch leads Gordon (sixth Sunday), a fellow non-winner this year, by a mere six points. 

Dale Earnhardt Jr. gave himself some breathing room with an eighth-place finish. He remains seventh in the standings, 37 points ahead of Gordon in 11th. A finish of 32nd or better at Richmond will lock Earnhardt into the Chase, whether he leads a lap or not. 

Engine issues that ended in a catastrophic failure relegated Keselowski to a 35th-place finish, putting him in dire peril of becoming the second defending champion to miss the Chase. (Tony Stewart was the first in 2006.) Keselowski fell to 15th in the standings, 28 points behind Kurt Busch in 10th. Not even a victory at Richmond will guarantee Keselowski a berth in NASCAR’s 10-race playoff. 

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