Lady Luck showed her ugly head to Kyle Busch with just two laps to go.

Matt finally achieved his first long sought after victory of the 2009 campaign at Darlington Raceway, which is his third at the historic venue that has seen its share of champions and his 25^th victory in the series, which leaves him fifth-best on the list of wins. Friday night probably couldn’t have gone much better for Matt, who has been suffering after a series of miscues and mishaps that left him in 12^th place in the standings after starting out the season by winning the first two cup races of the season.

Busch ended up finishing 16^th after leading for a race-high 143 laps and was only a few laps away from victory when he ended up running over debris from a crash between Scott Lagasse Jr. and Joe Nemechek and cutting his tire. The 16^th place finish did trim Joe Gibbs Racing team’s standings advantage to 37 points and tightened up the season standings heading into the heated part of the year.

Jason Leffler finished second in his Toyota, just ahead of Carl Edwards in third and Erik Darnell in fourth, both of which drive Fords.  Justin Allgaier managed to run consistently by staying out of the way and finished a competitive fifth, ahead of Ryan Newman in sixth, Mike Bliss in seventh place, Jeff Burton in eighth, Brian Vickers who managed to take ninth place and the final position in the top ten was taken by Scott Wimmer.

Image: Newscom

Post from: EveryJoe

Matt Kenseth Wins First Race of 2009

Image details: Diamond Hill Plywood 200 served by picapp.com

Tony Stewart came into the 2008 season with only four tracks on the Sprint Cup Series schedule that he’d never won either a Cup race or a Nationwide race at in his career, but he won the Nationwide Series races at Fontana and Talladega, and now he can go ahead and mark Darlington off his list as well.

Stewart started Friday night’s Diamond Hill Plywood 200 from the second row, but finished 0.815 seconds ahead of the series points leader, Clint Bowyer, to secure his fourth checkered flag in the six events he’s competed in the series this year. Stewart led the most laps on the day, but may not have actually been the car to beat. Matt Kenseth held more than a two-second lead over Tony when he came in for an unscheduled pit stop for four fresh tires on lap 121. Trying to catch the first car a lap down to be in position for the luck dog, Kenseth wrecked going through turn 4, ending his hopes for a victory.

With only three laps remaining, Stewart led Mark Martin to the green flag after the field came out of caution from a David Ragan spin. Martin stalled out on the restart, which set-off a six-car pileup and setup NASCAR’s notorious green-white-checkered finish. Stewart was able to pull away from Bowyer to get the win. The win gives Joe Gibbs Racing their sixth consecutive victory, and their 8th overall. David Reutimann, Todd Bodine, and Steve Wallace finished out the top-five.

Defending Nationwide Series champion, Carl Edwards, came into the race second in points, but blew a tire on lap 2 and smacked the wall. The wreck ended his day, and he finished dead last, dropping him down to third in the rankings. Kyle Busch leap-frogged Edwards in the points and took over the second position.

For more of this race coverage, please read Stewart Wins at Darlington over at the Finish Line.

Nationwide Series Standings (from nascar.com): 

Post from: EveryJoe

One More Down For Stewart