LONG POND, Pa. — The NASCAR series make little difference to Kyle Busch. The hottest driver in the sport always finds a way to victory lane.

Busch made a triumphant return to the Truck Series, pulling away on the final laps Saturday to win at Pocono Raceway. His season debut mirrored his recent finishes in the Sprint Cup series, where he’s won three straight races and four of five. Oh yes, of course he’s on the pole for Sunday’s race.

“It’s been unreal,” he said. “Those are the words to put on it. It’s fun. You just try to enjoy it as much as you can.”

He’d had plenty to enjoy this season since his return from a broken right leg and left foot suffered in an Xfinity Series race the day before the Daytona 500. He missed 11 Cup races and was scratched from his scheduled Truck Series debut at Charlotte.

Busch has won at least one race in all three of NASCAR’s national series for the 10th time in his career. The second-winningest driver in Truck Series history, Busch picked up career win No. 43. He won eight times in 2010 and seven times each in 2009 and 2014.

Busch had just enough fuel in an overtime finish to hold off fellow Cup driver Kevin Harvick. Tyler Reddick was third, followed by Cameron Hayley and Austin Dillon.

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Reddick took the series points lead from Matt Crafton. Crafton connected with Brad Keselowski and both drivers were knocked out of the race. Busch, who has won four straight NASCAR races, led 53 of 69 laps in the No. 51 Toyota.

“Any time I get in the vehicles, I want to get into victory lane,” Busch said. And that’s pretty much a done deal these days.

While Busch was always a contender to win, his bid for the checkered flag was helped by the early-race crash between Keselowski and Crafton.

Only six laps into the race, Crafton moved up the track to give Harvick room to pass. Keselowski had nowhere to go and ran into the rear of Crafton’s truck and both vehicles were badly damaged. Crafton and Keselowski, the 2012 Cup champion, exchanged words in the garage as the race roared on without them.

SPRINT CUP: In the final season of Jeff Gordon’s trailblazing career, there was another tribute this weekend for the retiring great: Pocono Raceway painted “GORDON” in white at the start/finish line in honor of the winningest driver in track history.

Pocono Raceway CEO Brandon Igdalsky presented Gordon with a $24,000 check, to match his car number, for the Jeff Gordon Children’s Foundation.

But what Gordon would really love to wave goodbye to is the zero in the win column that would force him to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship on points.

Gordon is 11th in the standings and a near lock to make the 16-driver field, though the results haven’t been enough to satisfy a driver with 92 career wins. He was mixed up in an early race wreck last weekend in the Brickyard 400 and took a car patched with duct tape to a 42nd-place finish.

Gordon has only two top-five finishes this season and 11 top 10s in the No. 24 Chevrolet, a drop from last season when he was a contender for a fifth championship. And there was this foreshadow: Gordon failed to crack the top 15 in the first three races of the season for the first time in his illustrious career.


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