{"id":340,"date":"2016-02-28T00:04:08","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T06:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=340"},"modified":"2016-02-28T00:04:08","modified_gmt":"2016-02-28T06:04:08","slug":"kyle-busch-heads-up-georgia-250-at-atlanta-motor-speedway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2016\/02\/28\/kyle-busch-heads-up-georgia-250-at-atlanta-motor-speedway\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyle Busch heads up Georgia 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy of Atlanta Motor Speedway<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

HAMPTON, Ga.\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0After finishing second five times in 11 XFINITY Series races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Kyle Busch put together a dominating race and held off a late charge by Kyle Larson to win the Heads Up Georgia 250 and become just the second driver to win in all three national touring series at Atlanta.<\/p>\n

\"Kyle

Kyle Busch, driver of the #18 NOS Energy Drink Toyota, celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR XFINITY Series Heads Up Georgia 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on February 27, 2016 in Hampton, Georgia. Photo by Jeff Zelevansky\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Kevin Harvick, the only other driver to win in all three series at Atlanta, was a nonfactor for most of the day after early car trouble put him down as many as two laps. He would never recover and finished a lap down in 12th place, snapping an AMS-record streak of three consecutive XFINITY Series victories.<\/p>\n

Busch, who won the pole and never ran worse than third place during a green-flag run, led a total of 119 of the 163 laps, including each of the final 93 to cruise to the checkered flag.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust to accomplish some of my goals that I have in racing (is special),\u201d said Busch. \u201cBeing in Atlanta \u2013 I have never won here before (in the XFINITY Series), so I can\u2019t say enough about JGR engines. I\u2019m glad to get it out of the way and checked off the list.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Kyle

Kyle Busch, driver of the #18 NOS Energy Drink Toyota, and Erik Jones, driver of the #20 Hisense USA Toyota, lead the field to the green flag to start the NASCAR XFINITY Series Heads Up Georgia 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on February 27, 2016 in Hampton, Georgia. (Photo by Matt Sullivan\/NASCAR via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Larson, who has two top-5s in three career XFINITY Series races at Atlanta, made a late charge as he and Busch weaved through lapped traffic and threatened the No. 18\u2019s lead, closing to within half a second in the final laps.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually thought that last run was going to be too long. Larson was just better than us. He could kind of close, and close, and close. With lapped traffic, you’re trying to figure things out,\u201d said Busch. \u201cThey were really nice to me. I think they screwed him up multiple times.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the runner-up finish, it was an encouraging afternoon for Larson who was already looking ahead to his next opportunity to reel in a victory.<\/p>\n

\"Daniel

Daniel Suarez, driver of the #19 ARRIS Toyota, leads Kyle Larson, driver of the #42 ENEOS Chevrolet, during the NASCAR XFINITY Series Heads Up Georgia 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on February 27, 2016 in Hampton, Georgia. Photo by Matt Hazlett\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe were a little bit better than I thought we were going to be. I thought we’d be a fourth-, fifth-, sixth-place car, and we were definitely second-best, I thought,\u201d Larson said. \u201cSo we were happy about that. I’m really excited about all the mile-and-a-halves that we’ll get to run later on this year. I won Homestead (in the final race of the 2015 season), and were could have won today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Busch was able to hold Larson at bay through the white flag and check Atlanta off his list of dominating performances.<\/p>\n

The one-two finish by Busch and Larson is the fourth of its kind in the XFINITY Series, Busch winning all of them.<\/p>\n

\"Kyle

Kyle Busch, driver of the #18 NOS Energy Drink Toyota, crosses the finish line to win the NASCAR XFINITY Series Heads Up Georgia 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on February 27, 2016 in Hampton, Georgia. Photo by Matt Sullivan\/NASCAR via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Erik Jones, a teammate of Busch\u2019s, started the race next to him on the outside of the front row, but a starting infraction forced him to the back of the field early after a pass-through penalty. He would use the entire race to recover and finish third.<\/p>\n

Paul Menard and Ty Dillon finished fourth and fifth respectively, while Brandon Jones led the way for Georgia drivers with an 11th-place finish.<\/p>\n

Story and photos courtesy of Atlanta Motor Speedway and NASCAR.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy of Atlanta Motor Speedway HAMPTON, Ga.\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0After finishing second five times in 11 XFINITY Series races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Kyle Busch put together a dominating race and held off a late charge by Kyle Larson to win the Heads Up Georgia 250 and become just the second driver to win in all three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[59,16],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-kyle-busch","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/AMS_022716_10.jpg?fit=4491%2C2994&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-5u","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":343,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}