Kurt Busch holds off brother, Kyle to win in Atlanta (7-11-21)
By: Becca Cottingham
Headline Photo Courtesy: NASCAR Twitter Page
We head to our last Atlanta Motor Speedway race before repaving and redesign the track. Drivers should be in for a fun day of racing with high tire wear and warm temperatures. We get the competition caution and when we get back from that we get another caution due to a track accident. It collected multiple drivers of Ricky Stenhouse Jr and Daniel Suarez. We got restarted and both Kyle Busch and Kurt Busch race after each other. We almost got a caution due to the cording of Ryan Newman’s tire, but he got onto pit road soon enough. Kurt Busch tries to close the gap but does not have enough to do so. Kyle Busch will win stage one.
Kurt Busch will bring us to the green flag for stage two. He gets a great start while the battle for the third position happens behind Kyle Busch and Tyler Reddick. Drivers should cycle through for green-flag stops during stage two. Aric Almirola’s team keeps him out hoping that a pop-up rain shower will come about to bring out a caution. They come across the radio multiple times trying to say it was raining. However, they were the only ones complaining about rain truly coming down. They eventually have to pull him down pit road. Kurt Busch will regain the lead to win stage two.
We head into stage three with a red flag due to chunks missing out of track. Kurt Busch will bring us back to green for the start of the third stage. Kyle Busch will quickly move to second place trying to get to his brother. Again drivers will need to go through green-flag pit stops and be extremely careful. A mistake on pit road at this point can be costly. Kyle Busch gains the lead back for a little bit but Kurt Busch will get it once back. They will battle back forth for the last eighteen laps. It comes down to Ross Chastain giving Kurt the preferred lane and blocking Kyle. Kurt Busch is our unofficial winner.
