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- Car or Driver
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- Rennsport VII
- UPDATE: Ben Keating – Ironman
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- IndyCar Returns To The Milwaukee Mile For A Tire Test
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Busch Wins Dollar General 300 At Chicagoland Speedway
- Updated: July 9, 2010
After dominating the early portions of the Dollar General 300 Nationwide Series race at the Chicagoland Speedway Friday night, Kyle Busch was forced to rally back from a drive through penalty for speeding in the pits on lap 56 to secure his 37th career NNS win.
Busch, whose Z-Line Designs Toyota led 108 of the first 150 laps, lost his lead to Joey Logano on a lap 148 restart, but took advantage of two late race cautions that bunched the field to pass Logano for the win.
“I knew I couldn’t spin my tires or let him force me to run up high because it was real dirty on the restart. Track position and clean air were key to getting ahead,” said Busch, who scored his seventh series win of 2010. “Joey had a fast car and I couldn’t get back to him when he got ahead. Our car was tight, but the final cautions gave us a chance to win after (Brad) Keselowski ran out of fuel.”
Keselowski, whose Discount Tire Dodge was second to Logano’s GameStop Toyota on the final restart, dropped to the yellow line, out of gas, as the field regrouped for a green-white checker finish following Trevor Bayne’s hard run into the Turn 1 wall. This allowed Busch a clear shot at Logano for the win.
“Momma said there’d be days like this,” said the third-generation pilot. “I ran out of gas here last year and I’ll be damned if I didn’t do it again. We were six laps to the good on fuel, but the yellows just sucked the gas out of the car.” He finished 22nd.
As for Logano, who was leading as the final green flag waved: “It’s almost like a guarantee that a caution is going to come out. You know it’s going to happen- with 10 to go, if you have a five length lead, you can almost promise that’s going to happen,” Logano said. “We took two tires, which worked for the first restart, and then that last yellow came out. I restarted on the bottom every time and was able to take the lead. To me it was a no-brainer. He (Busch) drove into the turn and got me loose. He beat me. I’m embarrassed more than anything.”
For Busch, Keselowski’s problems were a welcome gift.”I don’t think I could have gotten to Keselowski if he hadn’t run out of gas. Joey was too fast. I probably would have been second because there wouldn’t have been enough time,” mused Busch, whose win was finally secured when a six-car wreck, after he took the white flag, finally locked him in as the race winner.
Busch averaged 139.875mph in a race slowed five times for 20 caution laps. Logano hung on for second, followed by rookie Brian Scott, David Reutimann and Jason Leffler, as Toyotas swept the first five finishing spots.
Scott, who is a Raybestos Rookie of the Year candidate, scored his career best finish, but felt the wrath of Busch during the race- and it wasn’t the first time. “He (Busch) flipped me off for an entire lap where he drove one-handed. He did that to me earlier this year at Darlington.
If it had been earlier in the race I would have let him go,” said the third-place finisher, “but we were racing for position. He must be my #1 fan.”
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.”