Busch storms to the front

LOUDON – Kurt Busch, with his little brother having his way in NASCAR's Sprint Cup series, has struggled this season.

His problems, though, were nothing compared to the woes Michael Waltrip and J.J. Yeley have experienced.

And then the three of them went out and pulled off a timely and topsy-turvy trifecta -- thanks to pit strategy with a dose of thunderstorm -- in yesterday's Lenox Industrial Tools 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Track officials announced during the morning that the event had sold out and that a crowd of 101,000 was on hand.

Busch won for the first time since August in a race that ended when the storm hit after 284 laps. Waltrip was second for his first top-five finish of the season and Yeley was next for only his second top-five result in 92 career Cup races.

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"This is a place you want to be every week," said Yeley in a post-race press conference. "This particular week I found the way to the back door, so I could sneak in and sit in this seat."

Busch moved up four spots in the standings to No. 18 and said that yeah, maybe he did feel a bit for Tony Stewart. Stewart led for nearly half the race and wound up an unlucky 13th -- the result seemed fitting -- when his own team's strategy blew up.

"I've been on the flip side of it plenty of times," Busch said. "There are those times when you just grit your teeth and go, What could we have done differently and why did it happen this way?' And so it isn't pretty, but we'll take it."

The drama started around Lap 220.

NASCAR driver Kurt Busch, left, is congratulated yesterday after winning the rain-shortened NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Lenox Industrial Tools 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. (AP)

The Brothers Busch, and Waltrip and Yeley, were among a group of drivers who had not been factors and were looking to gain track position. They opted to come into the pits for fuel and tires. They calculated that they might not be able to go the rest of the way with the gas they had, but might be able to come close.

Stewart had been leading for about 80 laps and had recently pitted and stayed on the track and continued to control the race.

The next caution flag came at Lap 273 when Jamie McMurray crashed into Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s car as the No. 88 was leaving the track for a pit stop.

Stewart and the rest of the frontrunners needed at least gas for the stretch run and pitted.

Kurt Busch took over the lead with Waltrip and Yeley behind him.

There were 22 laps to go and the race restarted and two laps later Clint Bowyer and Sam Hornish Jr. got together in Turn 3 and the caution came out again.

That was it.

The rains hit and hit hard and NASCAR soon called the race for good.

Kyle Busch had his win and Stewart, complete with new tires and plenty of fuel, was left at No. 13.

"It's just been the oddest year I've ever seen for this race team," said Stewart, who still managed to move up a couple of spots to ninth in the points standings.

Martin Truex Jr. finished fourth and Elliott Sadler was fifth. Reed Sorenson, Casey Mears, Denny Hamlin, Johnson and Bobby Labonte completed the top 10.

Kyle Busch, who did pit late in the race, finished in the 25th spot and held on to his points lead. He also had a run-in on the track with Juan Pablo Montoya during the last caution.

NASCAR penalized Montoya two laps for the infraction.

Up front, Kurt Busch and crew chief Pat Tryson hope the driver's third win here -- he swept the 2004 races on the way to the series championship that year -- gets his Miller Lite Dodge team back on the right track.

"Hopefully this will give us some momentum, put some fun back in it," said Tryson, who made the pit stop calls. "Hopefully we can score some more wins and make it in the (12-team) Chase."

Waltrip and Yeley, both driving Toyotas, hope the finishes help keep their teams afloat.

Yeley was coming off an especially tough week. He failed to qualify last week at Sonoma.

"That was a big blow," he said. "We needed this finish really, really badly."

So did Waltrip.

"I'm going to slip out of here with my 170 points, 150 grand (his winnings for the race were listed at $209,333) and start putting some patches on a sinking ship, what has felt like a sinking ship for a year or so."

But don't try telling Waltrip he and the others caught a break with the weather and a storm that didn't allow Stewart and the others a chance to run them down.

"It wasn't the rain," Waltrip said more than once. "The rain just made the finish a little sooner. It was our strategy. We didn't have track position so we had to do something different"

And it worked.