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BRISTOL, Tenn. -- At one point of Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol, it looked like JGR rather than RCR would be the successful team letters of the day.
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| Jeff Burton: 'I won't lose sleep tonight because we didn't have the fastest car.' (AP) |
Kyle Busch was the first of the Gibbs drivers to suffer disappointment. Shooting for his second consecutive title on the heels of his historic win for Toyota last week in Atlanta, Busch had worked himself to the top spot in the first half of the race.
Despite starting 22nd in the field because qualifying was rained out and the lineup determined by last year's point standings, Busch rocketed his Camry through the field and had finally worked his way to the top spot -- until his power steering broke, causing Busch to spin on the backstretch and crash hard into the inside retaining wall.
Although able to return, Busch was out of contention and came home 17th, the only bright spot of his day on top of the point standings.
That left Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin to carry the JGR load.
Both were in position to win until the closing laps, when Stewart was sidelined in the controversial dust-up with Kevin Harvick only to watch Hamlin lose fuel pickup on the race's final restart, giving the lead and the win to Jeff Burton.
"Another really frustrating day for us -- I know I could have held those guys off there at the end, but we were either out of fuel or it was a fuel pickup problem like we had here last year," said Hamlin, who was knocked out of last year's race by the same problem.
"By all of calculations were good on fuel to the end, including a green-white-checkered, but we just couldn't seem to pick all of it up. It's been that kind of season for us -- we can't get a break. It's really too bad because we had a great FedEx Express Camry today. We led a bunch of laps and then had to battle all the way back to have a shot at the end. Once we got it, we just couldn't finish it off."
Gibbs' misfortunes turned into gold for the Childress bunch, with Burton, Harvick and Clint Bowyer giving RCR its first podium sweep in history.
"When Kevin and Tony got into each other, I viewed that as the opening and we had to jump through it," Burton said. "Kevin and I banged doors and for both of us to come through that and then Denny had his problems. The restart worked out perfect. I almost ran into him but it worked out."
It may not have been the most conventional way to get to Victory Lane, but Burton has been around long enough to know victories come in a variety of ways.
"Every win is different and unique," Burton said. "What I'm proud of today is we did the little things right. That's what I'm proud of. There are as many that we look back on and think we should have won but didn't.
