Apr 22, 2018 3 min read

Kyle Busch raced to his third straight victory late Saturday night, celebrated, and then got yelled at by his boss.

Joe Gibbs, it seems, hadn’t seen Busch climb into the crowd to acknowledge what appeared to be friendly fan.

“You did?” Gibbs said. “Oh my gosh! You should not do that. You run a risk.”

For Busch, though, it seemed appropriate, coming at the end of a week marked by ample discussion of his dustup with Dale Earnhardt Jr. at Richmond a decade earlier. That race, many believe, is what cemented Busch’s reputation as NASCAR’s newest on-track villian.

“It was the 10-year anniversary of you know what,” Busch explained, and he could see fans wearing his gear.

On the track, Busch pulled away on a restart in a two-lap overtime sprint to the finish in NASCAR’s Cup Series.

Busch, who started 32nd but quickly worked his way into contention, outran Chase Elliott and teammate Denny Hamlin for his fifth career victory at Richmond Raceway, the most among active drivers. The victory is his 46th overall and came from the deepest starting spot in the field of his career. It also is the deepest starting position for a winner at Richmond, surpassing Clint Bowyer, who started 31st in 2008.

The points leader also matched Kevin Harvick’s three-race winning streak from earlier in the season.

“Pats on the back, everybody,” Busch said on his radio after taking the checkered flag.

The race went more than 350 laps with the only cautions coming after stages one and two, both won by defending race champion Joey Logano, who finished fourth. It remained clean until Ryan Blaney and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. crashed on Lap 353, bringing out the first on-track yellow.

Busch took the lead after the next caution, brought out by the smoking car of Ryan Newman, when he was running second to Truex heading onto pit road and got out first. He also beat Hamlin and Harvick off the line on a restart with six to go, and then never let anyone contend when the race went back to green for the final time on lap 400.

IndyCar race stopped, postponed: Josef Newgarden applauded IndyCar’s decision not to risk 16 more minutes on a treacherous, rain-soaked track, even though he could have been the biggest beneficiary.

Other drivers weren’t so happy with earlier calls.

Newgarden will remain up front at Barber Motorsports Park Monday for the completion of the Indy Grand Prix of Alabama. Drivers got in just over 44 minutes of a scheduled 2-hour, or 90-lap, race Sunday under heavy rain that caused some cars to hydroplane and affected visibility.

The race was called before it was halfway through, and thus official.

“I was calling for us not to run and I was in the easiest situation,” Newgarden said. “I was leading the race, had the best viewpoint. We do another (16) minutes under caution and we call the thing halfway from a time standpoint, we pick up the win. It’s more advantageous for us to get it in, but I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t think conditions were right.”