Kyle Busch snuck past the spinning cars of Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe to steal his first Cup win of the season Sunday night on slick, wet, dirt-covered Bristol Motor Speedway.
Reddick led 99 of the 250 laps and was in control of the race from the final restart with 24 laps remaining. The traffic allowed Briscoe to close in on Reddick and he timed his move for the win for the third turn, when he tried to slide past Reddick on the inside.
Busch skirted through for his first win after the move backfired and both cars spun out of control.
Busch said, "We got one, you know?"
Busch won for the ninth time in Cup at Bristol, the first time in two dirt races, and was booed by fans who waited out two rain delays that pushed the first race on Easter Sunday to nearly four hours.
The 1999 race in which Earnhardt was booed for bumping Terry Labonte out of the way for the win is what I feel like right now. I didn't do anything.
Reddick blamed himself for not holding off Briscoe. Reddick was found on the pit road to apologize by Briscoe, who went from two turns away from the win to 22nd.
I was going to spin out, I think. I wanted to let you know. I am sorry. I wish you would have won.
Reddick admitted he should have been more defensive.
Reddick said that he didn't think he did everything right. I should have done a better job of letting him get that close. He ran me back down. It was really hard to do that.
You are racing on dirt, going for the move on the final corner. It is everything you hope to fight for in your situation as a driver. It was really exciting for the fans. I should have pulled away so he wasn't able to make that move.
The race was stopped for the second time before it was supposed to go green with 30 laps to go.
Busch, who was running second as the rain slicked the track, said of the conditions that it was slimy.
Reddick knew he had a lot of work to do if he was to win.
One of the best in stock car racing, Kyle Busch, he is definitely going to make me earn it, said Reddick from inside his Chevrolet.
When the rain finally stopped, it was Briscoe who wrecked Reddick's trip to victory lane.
The race was NASCAR's second attempt at running a Cup race on dirt and it turned into a wet and muddy mystery when rain stopped the racing.
Bristol dumped more than 2,300 truckloads of red clay onto its beloved bullring to help NASCAR add variety to the schedule at a time when the stock car series is experimenting with radical changes. The Cup Series deliberately chose Easter Sunday to take the prime-time television slot because Fox Sports convinced NASCAR to do so.
The previous 10 Cup races on Easter Sunday were all delayed because of weather. The purpose of the event was to dominate the television audience gathered together as a family the way the NBA and the NFL do on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The new audience saw a mass of confusion because few drivers seemed to understand the rules. Some drivers stopped the race because they knew scoring was stopped under the red flag and wouldn't resume until the race went green.
Many drivers did not pit because they assumed they would move up in the running order. Busch had his car out front when NASCAR stopped all activity, but he was scored as the leader because he had pitted.
Denny Hamlin, who had already been eliminated from the race, was watching Fox Sports and saw a rules explanation that lasted longer than a minute.
Hamlin wrote that it was hard to take this seriously as a fan sitting on his ass.
NASCAR was making up the rules as it went along, according to a meme posted by the runner-up in the Truck Series race. In its pre-race rules video, NASCAR said that scoring would be stopped at the end of the stage and not resume until the race went green again.
The procedures at Bristol were different from all other Cup races and the confusion up and down pit road indicated few had a clear grasp of them. The mandatory pre-race driver meeting was replaced by a video after the rules were discussed.
The race resumed with Briscoe as the leader.
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