Kyle Busch passes Mark Martin on the outside lane at Bristol Motor Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
In NASCAR as in real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. Especially now that NASCAR has adopted double-wide restarts after caution-flag periods.
In Saturday night’s Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, race-winner Kyle Busch took the lead for the first and only time on Lap 433. Busch, who was on four fresh tires, was able to muscle his way around Ryan Newman, who was on two fresh tires and Michael Waltrip, who was on old tires, to grab the point.
Four times during the final 60 laps of the race, cautions flew. And on each subsequent restart, Busch chose the outside lane in his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry, which relegated the second-place car to the slower inside groove. Mark Martin was on the inside for the final three restarts, and while he put a lot of pressure on Busch, he never could get around him, despite the fact that his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Impala SS was the fastest car on the track.
Instead, Busch won and Martin finished second.
“Well, the double file restart, I mean, you can't start picking that apart,” shrugged Martin after the race. “No, I wasn't in the best line the whole second half of the race. I was always on the inside. So that was a disadvantage. Probably not as big a disadvantage as single file and lining up behind the leader. … But that's the breaks.”
A similar scenario played out in the Brickyard 400, where Jimmie Johnson restarted from the outside after a late-race caution and barely held off Martin for the victory.
And once the Chase for the Sprint Cup begins, lane selection will be even more critical.
“I tell you, there's going to be one place where everybody is going to choose the bottom, that's Martinsville,” said Busch. “I guarantee you that. I think it's going to be the bottom there.”
