Kyle Busch avoided a myriad of tire issues among the field to hold on and grab his second-straight Auto Club 400 win at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif. on Sunday.
The victory is the Joe Gibbs Racing driver's first of the season. He joins Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski and Carl Edwards among those who've virtually punched their tickets to the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Busch held off rookie Kyle Larson -- who took home his first Nationwide Series victory Saturday -- on the final green-white-checkered restart.
Larson was trailed by Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth and Tony Stewart to complete the top-five.
Harvick had a tire go down early in the race to bring out the first caution of the day, taking on some right side damage to his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet. Luckily for him, there was plenty of race left and he recovered to make it back into the top three later in the race, but had another left rear go down with 62 laps remaining. He finished 36th.
Before the race even hit 50 laps, Earnhardt Jr.'s front left tire went down, putting him into the wall for some minor right side damage. Earnhardt made it back up to the top 10 but eventually fell back to finish 12th.
Stewart spun out and took some damage on Lap 56 but recovered for his second straight top-five finish.
Brian Scott and Aric Almirola got into each other before the midway point of the race, ending Almirola's day.
“It's pretty obvious what happened. The 33 (of Scott) was obviously a dart without feathers and coming across the race track," said Almirola. "He ran right into me. It's a shame for our Farmland team, our Ford Fusion was getting a lot better. We didn't start off the race like we had wanted to but got it a lot better. Man, he came from all the way at the bottom of the race track and ran into me. He's not even racing this series for points. He's out there having fun because his daddy gets to pay for it and he wrecked us. That’s frustrating.”
Parker Kligerman hit the wall on Lap 85 after making contact with Casey Mears. Kligerman later took to Twitter to express his frustration, saying: "The 13 car dumped me for no reason. Was having an AWESOME day. Never been through anything like the last (two) months."
Only minutes before the start of the race, Joe Gibbs Racing officials announced that driver Denny Hamlin was not medically cleared to race because of a sinus infection that is causing vision problems. Sam Hornish Jr. drove the No. 11 FedEx Toyota in his place and finished 17th.
Joey Logano -- who battled with Hamlin down to the wire at Auto Club last year -- had a rear end gear failure and finished 39th.
Last week's winner, Edwards, spun out at one point, putting him a lap down. He came back to finish 10th.
Edwards took over the Sprint Cup Series points lead; he now has 186, one more than Dale Earnhardt Jr.
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