The AutoLotto 200 went the way most Xfinity Series races have been going at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
All that was different was by how much Kyle Busch won.
A dominant presence at the Magic Mile in NASCAR’s top developmental circuit, Busch outdid himself Saturday, holding off Erik Jones and throttling the rest of the field to take his 82nd Xfinity win and fifth at NHMS – all in the last eight years.
Busch’s Toyota humbled the rest of the competitors. He led 190 of the 200 laps, and with three quarters of the race over, there were only nine cars on the lead lap. A series of late cautions brought the number to 13.
“(Crew chief) Chris (Gayle) made some great calls today, some really good calls, and we had a stout car and a stout engine,” Busch said. “I think (the key) was having a really good car and being with a great team.”
Second place went to the 19-year-old Jones, Busch’s teammate and the only driver to mount any challenge against the defending Sprint Cup champion. Jones even led three laps halfway through the race, but fell off the pace due to a bad restart after a caution on lap 100.
Jones rallied back, picking up four tires during a pit stop after a lap 166 caution and bouncing back with strong restarts on laps 174 and 182. Accidents immediately following the green flags prevented him from making a move on Busch, however, and Jones couldn’t get close enough to challenge after a final restart to begin the 187th lap.
“I had a decent run today. We were second-class most of the day,” Jones said. “Overall, I think we just weren’t quite good enough for the 18. I thought maybe we’d have something for him there at the end with four tires, but it took about probably 20, 25 laps for it to really burn in and for four tires to come into play.”
Busch, who has served as a mentor of sorts for Jones, had nothing but praise for the talented teenager.
“Erik ran a great race,” Busch said. “He’s obviously in really good equipment too, and we know how good he is. … He ran me clean and gave me room, and didn’t door-slam me or anything to try to get the win. Our cars were pretty equal, I felt like. It was just a matter of track position.”
Busch had the inside angle on that from the start, winning the pole earlier in the morning, and he continued to flaunt that speed in the afternoon. He was outside of first only twice, when Jones led briefly and when Alex Bowman led seven laps after a pit stop shuffle.
Aside from that, it was Busch vs. Jones – Brad Keselowski, running in third, trailed by over seven seconds at one point late – and Busch closed easily to stretch his record for Xfinity Series victories.
“I guess they’re big numbers. I really don’t know what big numbers are. Records are made to be broken,” Busch said. “There may be somebody like me that comes on down the road that does the same thing that I’ve been fortunate enough to do.”
Keselowski finished third, followed by Daniel Suarez and Austin Dillon.
Doug Coby’s had the best car all year, and he had the best car Saturday afternoon at NHMS.
Still, win No. 3 this season didn’t come easily.
Coby took the lead with five laps to go at the New England 100, holding off a determined Donny Lia in the final stretch to claim his fourth Modified victory at the Loudon speedway.
Coby led a race-high 55 laps, dominating the first half of the race before the competition caution midway through the race. The stoppage cost Coby, who slid down to eighth and faced a slew of drivers to pass in the race’s second half.
“When you go back to seventh of eighth on the restart, it’s just a matter of how you respond,” Coby said. “We can’t necessarily control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond.
“My choice was to just settle in, see how the car was going to react and pick them off one at a time.”
The series points leader did just that, climbing back to the lead by the 81st lap. It set up a back-and-forth challenge between Coby and Lia that lasted the remainder of the race. Lia took the lead right back. Coby went ahead again on the 83rd lap. Lia regained it on lap 88, only for Coby to challenge on lap 91 and overtake him on lap 96.
This time, Coby opened up a big lead, but Lia had a final move for the finish. As they swung through the final turn, Lia slid to the outside, hoping to get enough of a burst to edge Coby at the line.
He fell just short – Coby won by only 0.036 seconds. Patrick Emerling, Ronnie Silk and Ryan Newman rounded out the top five
“There’s 20 different things I think we could have done differently to win the race, especially when you only lose by a bumper,” Lia said. “But hats off to those guys. They’re on a tear, and we’ll try to figure it out.”
A pair of late cautions were no match for Corey LaJoie. Neither were the other drivers at the K&N Pro Series East’s United Site Services 70.
LaJoie, making his first series start of the season, prevailed through two restarts in the final five laps to race to victory, cruising comfortably ahead of a field led by Todd Gilliland, Justin Haley and Kyle Benjamin.
“This is the best one,” said LaJoie, a five-time winner in the series. “It’s good to get the confidence back up and realize you can still drive these things fast.”
Benjamin started on the pole and led the first 34 laps, but LaJoie got by him and wasn’t challenged again.
His wide margin was cut when a caution for Tyler Hughes’s flat tire on lap 61 prompted a restart with five laps to go, and then again when debris off Ruben Garcia Jr.’s car prompted a restart with three go-arounds remaining.
On both occasions, LaJoie easily pulled away from the drivers behind him to notch his first K&N East win since 2012 – and ease some disappointment from spinning out during the Xfinity Series race earlier in the day.
“I was pretty down in the dumps. … (You think) ‘I’m running pretty good,’ and all of a sudden something breaks and it’s out of your control,” LaJoie said. “I don’t think I shook it off until getting into one of the first laps. … You’re like ‘Okay, new race. New whole deal.’ ”
(Drew Bonifant can be reached at 369-3340, abonifant@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @dbonifant.)