Hampton, GA

Kyle “Rowdy” Busch took to the track for the running of the American Commercial Lines 200 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race Saturday afternoon at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the pole position for the 130 lap, 200 mile event.  Busch paced the field in the final practice and in qualifying posting a time of 31.428 seconds at a speed of 176.403 mph.  He continued to showcase his talent in the race where he posted his fourth win in five starts at the 1.54-mile track in Hampton, GA.  Busch has 11 NASCAR Camping World career wins and his eighth win in chassis No. 11.

Busch fought loose handling conditions in the event, pitting for air pressure adjustments on his first pit stop for tires, returning then for fuel and chassis adjustments.  Busch after the restart reported to crew chief, Doug George that the race truck was “fighting loose – tight conditions”

The team returned to pit road on under the caution to reverse the changes trying to take tighten the Miccosukee Resort Tundra.  Busch returned to the track reclaiming the lead on lap 117 when the lead teams came back down pit road for fuel and he opted to stay on the track.  Excitement was short-lived when Busch discovered he had lost third gear in the truck and second gear at the restart with only seven laps remaining.

“Second’s broke, too — we’re done,” Busch said.  “I had to go all the way to fourth and limp around there. It felt like an eternity to get this thing up to speed.”

But Busch grabbed fourth gear and was able to slowly get under power where he used his undisputed talent to power past the front trucks to take the lead from Todd Bodine and claim his fourth win in five starts.

“This was a great race today – I had a lot of fun and hopefully the fans had a great time. I want to thank them for coming out. That was a battle there with all those guys on that restart. I thought I had second (gear), I applied power and then it snapped second so I had to go to fourth and just slugged it in fourth the whole start there. We fell back and luckily we had a great enough Toyota Tundra here and we were able to drive back up through there and pass those guys. Can’t thank Doug George (crew chief) and all these guys on this team enough – Miccosukee, NOS Energy Drink, Toyota and everybody that makes this program possible. It’s hard and everybody knows that in today’s world, but we’re getting it done or we’re trying to.”

“We made some changes there on that last pit stop with some air pressures and track bar, but the truck did not like it – it hated it. We fell back and just barely hung on and battled through that. Then we were able to come in and make another change and once we got it better we started heading in the right direction there. The final change we made a couple more changes and got out in front of all those guys, but unfortunately the transmission blew. Fortunately for the fans they saw a great race, but I would of much rather had second and third gear and made it a boring race there at the end instead of having to race those guys. It got my blood pressure too high.  I got out of the way so those guys could go and race – I didn’t want to block them up. We fell back, I don’t know how far, but it had to be eighth or 10th or something like that, but it felt like an eternity to get this thing up to speed and going. Once we got there I didn’t lift in those final 12 laps – I just stayed in the gas wide open, ran the middle groove and it prevailed. ”

The NASCAR Camping World is off until Saturday March 28th where the Series will return to action at Martinsville Speedway, March 28, 2009.