CUP: Career Best At Pocono For Kyle Busch

Sprint Cup

CUP: Career Best At Pocono For Kyle Busch

Kyle Busch finished second behind his teammate Denny Hamlin at Pocono...

Tom Jensen | Posted June 06, 2010 Long Pond, PA

Denny Hamlin and Tony Stewart race ahead of Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Gillette Fusion ProGlide 500 at Pocono Raceway. (Photo: Getty Images)

If you want to know how big a gap Joe Gibbs Racing has opened over the rest of the NASCAR Sprint Cup field, you need look no further than Kyle Busch’s runner-up finish to teammate Denny Hamlin in Sunday’s Gillette Fusion ProGlide 500 at Pocono Raceway.

LINK> UNOFFICIAL RESULTS: GILLETTE FUSION PROGLIDE 500 - POCONO
PDF> UNOFFICIAL DRIVER POINTS: GILLETTE FUSION PROGLIDE 500 - POCONO

Coming into Sunday’s race, Busch had only led two laps in 10 previous Pocono starts and never finished higher than fourth at the 2.5-mile triangle. But this time, he led 32 laps, second only to Hamlin’s 88. It was the third consecutive top-three finish this season for Busch and his eighth consecutive finish of ninth or better. With 14 races now in the books, Busch trails NASCAR Sprint Cup points leader Kevin Harvick by just 19 points.

After the race, Busch was pleased with his result, although he acknowledged he was no competition for his teammate Hamlin, who has four victories in just nine career starts at Pocono.

“Denny has this place figured out,” Busch said. “I did the best I could. I went from about an F at knowing how to get around here today to about an A, and an A didn't get it done. Really happy for the 11 (Hamlin) guys. Good to see them win another one. For us to run as strong as we were running, same about the 20 (JGR teammate Joey Logano), the 20 was running really good there until his whatever happened. It was good to see JGR running good like that here.”

Busch tried to get Hamlin on the final green-white-checkered restart, but had nothing for his teammate.

“I felt like if I had a shot at him, I better get alongside of him off Turn 1,” Busch said of Hamlin. “Could never get there. Got into turn one, saw the 11 drive it off in there pretty far and the 14 (Tony Stewart) followed. I kind of braked a little sooner than I normally had been. Turned to the bottom, got underneath both of them. Got a good run off of Turn 1. Tony and I battled it out, hashed it into Turn 2. We came out of there on top. We just set sail to the white flag and the checkered.”

A week earlier in separate press conferences at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Busch and Hamlin traded jabs about an incident in the Sprint All-Star Race, but if Sunday at Pocono was any barometer, Joe Gibbs Racing is head-and-shoulders beyond the competition right now, even if the two drivers aren’t especially close friends. And that does not bode well for the rest of the field in 2010.

LINK> UNOFFICIAL RESULTS: GILLETTE FUSION PROGLIDE 500 - POCONO
PDF> UNOFFICIAL DRIVER POINTS: GILLETTE FUSION PROGLIDE 500 - POCONO

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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Tom Jensen

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