Busch Wins At Chicagoland

By Paul Gohde
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Updated: September 13, 2014

Kyle Busch celebrates winning the Lucas Oil 225 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Chicagoland Speedway. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Kyle Busch won the rain-postponed Lucas Oil 225 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race Saturday night at the Chicagoland Speedway.

Busch, who was disappointed earlier in the day when he failed to win Saturday’s Nationwide Series event, charged through the field twice to capture his sixth truck series’ event of the year and the 41^st of his career.

Matt Crafton, Kyle Busch, and Darrell (Bubba) Wallace Jr do battle. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Johnny Sauter leads Kyle Busch and Ryan Blaney. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Darrell Wallace takes the lead from Busch in turn 3. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Joey Coulter gets service from his pit crew. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Ray Black Jr kicks up sparks in turn 3. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Matt Crafton finishes second and takes over the points lead by 5 points from teammate Johnny Sauter. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Austin Dillon finished 3rd, but his truck failed post race inspection for being too low in the front end. [Mark Walczak Photo]

The checkers fly for Kyle Busch at Chicagoland. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Kyle Busch celebrates with a victory burnout. [Mark Walczak Photo]

Kyle Busch takes a bow. [Mark Walczak Photo]

“It was fun for us in the Dollar General Tundra tonight, but this doesn’t make our loss earlier any sweeter. We could have had two victories and be going for three tomorrow,” noted “Rowdy,” who started the race dead last after missing the series’ practice session Thursday due to Sprint Cup media obligations in Chicago.

“Early on I was patient with it, just trying to get everyone acclimated to not being on the track at all yesterday from practice day. I was just trying to pace myself early. I knew what I had and when I had that pit road penalty and got stuck behind, then I could charge back through harder.”

Johnny Sauter, the points’ leader coming to Chicagoland, led early from the pole in his Curb Records Toyota, but a pit road speeding penalty just past half-way dropped him to a 14^th-place finish and out of the points’ lead.

Meanwhile, Busch was working through the field and was fifth by lap 25, but a speeding penalty while exiting the pits seven laps later forced another run through the pack.

“The truck was good and got back to the front there. I was chasing the 20 (Austin Dillon) there for the lead and was getting tight behind him with the aero and that hurt him,” said Busch who led three times after half-way (66 laps), and ran to a 1.129 sec. win over 2013 series’ champion Matt Crafton.

Crafton’s runner-up finish pushed him to a five-point lead over Thor Motorsports teammate Sauter, with Ryan Blaney third, 16 points down with seven races remaining.

“We’ve got a long way to go in the points. I’m tired of finishing second to him (Busch). I was good on our first two runs; then I would get loose and tight,” noted the Menards Toyota pilot who has finished second to Busch on six occasions. “I’m going to have to whoop him I think…on the track or off.”

Crafton, Blaney, Busch, Austin Dillon and Bubba Wallace battled for the lead through much of the race with Dillon eventually grabbing third over rookies Tyler Reddick and Jeb Burton.

“I didn’t have anything for the 51 truck (Busch). I lead laps and it would tighten up at the end of the run,” Dillon explained. “You needed to start out “7-8/of 10” loose to be good at the end. We were up front and contending, but Kyle was awesome.”

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

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