NASCAR: Kyle Busch wins marathon race in St. Louis for third victory of 2023

Kyle Busch held on during a flurry of late-race restarts to win his third NASCAR Cup Series race of 2023 Sunday at Gateway.

Busch led the 243-lap race’s final 60 laps after he got past Kyle Larson on lap 184. He needed to deal with five different restarts in that span to hold on to win.

The final restart extended the race three laps beyond its scheduled distance when Bubba Wallace’s car had an apparent brake rotor failure and he hit the wall on lap 235. The caution necessitated a two-lap sprint to the finish and Busch had the race won entering Turn 1 right after the restart after he cleared Larson.

Busch led 121 laps after starting first and didn’t find himself far from the lead when he wasn’t at the front. Denny Hamlin finished second ahead of Joey Logano in third and Larson in fourth.

Race was red-flagged for lightning right after it began

After an early caution for a Tyler Reddick spin, the race was red-flagged for 105 minutes after lightning was detected four miles from the track just east of St. Louis, Missouri. The rest of the first stage went caution-free after it restarted and the second stage had just two cautions.

The cautions happened fast and furious in the third stage. There were six cautions over the race’s final 100 laps and the stage also featured two red flags. The first came when the track needed to be cleaned up following Noah Gragson’s wreck and the second came with fewer than 20 laps to go to fix the wall after a wreck involving Austin Dillon and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Brake rotors kept failing

Faulty brake rotors were the main driver of the caution frenzy. Four cautions were caused by wrecks by drivers who had brake failures entering Turn 1. Carson Hocevar’s brakes failed on lap 90 before Reddick had a brake failure 84 laps later.

Gragson’s crash was because of an apparent brake failure and so was Wallace’s. World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway is a 1.25-mile track with flat corners and long straights. That’s a recipe for heavy braking on corner entry, and it was clear that some cars’ brakes couldn’t handle the demands.

Corey LaJoie’s bad day

Corey LaJoie got his big chance Sunday while subbing for Chase Elliott in the No. 9 car for Hendrick Motorsports. The chance probably didn’t go anything like LaJoie planned.

LaJoie finished 21st and third of the four Hendrick cars after Alex Bowman had an apparent mechanical issue at the commencement of the final restart. That finish probably wasn’t reflective of LaJoie’s speed either. He ran outside the top 20 for nearly the entire race and could have easily finished outside the top 25 if it wasn’t for the late crashes.

LaJoie’s opportunity came after Elliott was suspended for Sunday’s race after intentionally hooking Hamlin into the wall during the Coca-Cola 600 and after LaJoie had clamored for years to have a chance to show what he could do in top-tier equipment.

Yet Hocevar — the man replacing LaJoie at Spire Motorsports — was considerably faster in lesser equipment until his brakes failed, and LaJoie didn’t run near the other three Hendrick drivers for much of the second and third stages of the race. Outside of a preposterous crash, it’s hard to see how Sunday’s race could have gone much worse for LaJoie.

Race results

1. Kyle Busch

2. Denny Hamlin

3. Joey Logano

4. Kyle Larson

5. Martin Truex Jr.

6. Ryan Blaney

7. Daniel Suarez

8. William Byron

9. Michael McDowell

10. Kevin Harvick

11. Christopher Bell

12. Chris Buescher

13. Austin Cindric

14. AJ Allmendinger

15. Todd Gilliland

16. Justin Haley

17. Ryan Preece

18. Erik Jones

19. Aric Almirola

20. Ty Gibbs

21. Corey LaJoie

22. Ross Chastain

23. Harrison Burton

24. JJ Yeley

25. Ty Dillon

26. Alex Bowman

27. BJ McLeod

28. Brad Keselowski

29. Gray Gaulding

30. Bubba Wallace

31. Austin Dillon

32. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

33. Noah Gragson

34. Chase Briscoe

35. Tyler Reddick

36. Carson Hocevar