Duck Commander 500 Weekend Notebook

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SPEEDREADS April 11, 2016

KYLE BUSCH SWEEPS TEXAS

Kyle Busch sweeps the XFINITY and Sprint Cup weekend at TMS PAGE 2

WEEKEND Quotes

What they said over Duck Commander 500 weekend PAGE 3

WEEKEND notes

Duck Commander 500 weekend notebook PAGE 4

life changing

Robertson’s adopted son returns to TMS where he met his new family last year PAGE 6

shelton visit

Blake Shelton films new NBC spot at TMS PAGE 8

Kyle Busch celebrates his Duck Commander 500 victory

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LEAD LAP

TOP NEWS FROM TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY

KYLE BUSCH EARNS ANOTHER XFINITY/CUP SWEEP WITH A PAIR OF WINS AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY Kyle Busch might want to think about purchasing a broom company.

Busch, the defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, notched his all-time NASCAR-leading ninth XFINITY Series/Sprint Cup Series weekend sweep by winning the O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 and Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway over the weekend.

These victories followed his sweep of the Camping World Truck Series and Sprint Cup races the week before at Martinsville, giving him four wins across all NASCAR national series in the span of just eight days.

How rare a feat was that? Harry Gant was the last to accomplish the same feat back in 1991 when he swept weekend races at Richmond and Dover.

“You’ve got to have all the pieces of the puzzle put together, but I think more importantly we’ve got good cars,” Busch said after Saturday night’s victory in the Duck Commander 500 Sprint Cup Series race. “Our crew chiefs are just doing a really good job right now, I think, just being able to apply all the things that we’ve learned over the last couple of years. It’s all worked real well, and it’s been exciting to have the success that we’ve had as of late, and let’s just keep it going.”

Busch took the lead by passing Martin Truex Jr. on a restart with 33 laps to go and never gave it back to the field.

Truex Jr., who had led a race-high 141 laps, and Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Carl Edwards, who led 124, were the frontrunners for the majority of the race.

“We just out-tired him there at the end. ... The restart was going to be key,” Busch said of his battle with Truex Jr and opting for fresh tires while his fellow competitor did not.

“If I could just get out in front of him, I knew I could protect (the lead) the rest of the race.

“They had a good Kyle Busch holds a “Texas Sweep” broom following his restart, but we got win in the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speeda better one and I way. He won the O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 the night before just had to get up to record his NASCAR-record ninth XFINITY/Cup Series on his door,” he weekend sweep. added. “He chose at Daytona. He has led at least 119 laps the inside, and in all five starts this season. the inside has been winning the race all night long, but this time on the last “To come out as strong as we have restart it (the outside) finally prevailed this year, this could have been five for us.” in a row,” Busch said, referring to his second-place finish after a blown tire at Busch increased his win total in all naFontana a few weeks back. “Certainly tional series at Texas Motor Speedway we’ve had a great season, and the guys to 13 (two Sprint Cup, eight XFINITY (his crew) have done a great job doing and three Camping World Truck) with what we’re doing. the pair of victories.

He put on a dominating performance from the pole in the O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 as he won for the fourth time in five XFINITY starts in 2016. Busch led 150 of the 200 laps en route to notching his record eighth victory at Texas Motor Speedway while extending his series record to 80 wins.

Busch has led 75 percent of the laps run (776 of 1,033) in the XFINITY Series this season and that is even without him running the 120-lap season opener

One thing Busch won’t need to spend much time on is looking for a cowboy hat to wear as he now has 13 of them from Victory Lane celebrations over the years at Texas Motor Speedway.

“I guess you have a spare one for every day of the week,” he said. “It certainly is a good problem to have. We’ve had some really good runs here over the years, and we’ve been really fast.”

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It’s pretty darn good, I’ll tell you that. I’ve got a great wife, a great son and I’m having a blast, living the dream.

- Duck Commander 500 winner Kyle Busch on sweeping the NASCAR national series weekend for a second consecutive week and life in general.

It was fun. I enjoyed driving the car tonight. The car was very loose and very challenging but a lot of fun for me. Obviously our car was good, so passing guys we had a lot of passing, which with the ‘14 or ‘15 package, I’d have never got by Joey (Logano), so it was fun to have an opportunity to sort of set somebody up and get it by him there at the end, and that’s due to the direction we went this year with the low downforce. Pretty cool.

- Dale Earnhardt Jr. (above) on NASCAR’s new downforce package after finishing second in the Duck Commander 500.

It was a solid night. Obviously I hated to have to start in the back, but I think having a good qualifying effort allowed us to get a good pit selection. I think that helped us to try to gain spots throughout the night, but the biggest thing was just having a good car. I was really happy with it, especially on the long run, and we made some gains throughout the night to try to help our short run speed. I thought we did that.

Definitely still have some work to do on my end, and we’ll keep digging at it. We’re definitely not content. We know we have some work to do, and we’d like to be contenders. So we’re going to keep working at it.

- Chase Elliott on finishing fifth in the Duck Commander 500 after starting 40th in the field due to a transmission change prior to the race.

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SPLASH ’N GO

NOTES FROM TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY

duck commander 500 notes CONSISTENT WINNERS Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch have combined to win six out of the last seven races at Texas Motor Speedway.

Johnson has four of those, winning the AAA Texas 500 the past three years along with the Duck Commander 500 in 2015. Busch won the NRA 500 spring race in 2013 and added Saturday night’s win in the Duck Commander 500. The only driver to interrupt their dominance is Joey Logano, who won the Duck Commander 500 in 2014. Busch finished third in that race and Johnson 25th.

johnson continues to set records Johnson’s fourth-place finish in the Duck Commander 500 was his 14th career top-five effort at Texas Motor Speedway, giving him sole possession on the track record. Previously, he was tied with Matt Kenseth, who finished 11th in Saturday’s race. Johnson also hold track records for career Sprint Cup wins (6), top-10 finishes (20) and laps led (1,023).

ELLIOTT TAKES FAMILY LEAD Chase Elliott, who registered his first career XFINITY Series win at Texas Motor Speedway in 2014, got his Sprint Cup career off to a strong start

at the venue as well. In his first Sprint Cup start at Texas Motor Speedway, Elliott finished fifth in the Duck Commander 500 after being forced to start 40th in the field due to a transmission change prior to the race. He also already has family bragging rights as Bill Elliott, Chase’s NASCAR Hall of Fame father, was only able to muster a personal-best finish of ninth at Texas Motor Speedway in 16 career starts.

BUSCH MOVING UP Busch led 34 laps en route to his win in the Duck Commander 500 to move him into fourth place for career Sprint Cup Series laps led at Texas Motor Speedway with 739. He passed Greg Biffle (733) and now trails Johnson (1,023), Matt Kenseth (854) and Tony Stewart (801), respectively.

LEADing LAPS NOT TRANSLATING TO WINS The driver leading the most laps in the last two races at Texas Motor Speedway has not resulted in victory. In November’s AAA Texas 500, Brad Keselowski led a track-record 312 of 334 laps but Johnson emerged as the victor. In Saturday night’s Duck Commander 500, Martin Truex Jr. led a race-high 141 laps only to see Kyle Busch claim victory. Truex Jr. went on to finish sixth.

EDWARDS HAS A SOLID RACE Carl Edwards, a three-time winner at Texas Motor Speedway, led 124 laps in the Duck Commander 500, which was nearly

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MISCELLANEOUS Logano notched his fourth consecutive top-five finish in the Duck Commander 500 with a thirdplace finish Saturday night. The streak began with a fifth-place finish in 2013 and was followed by a win in ’14 and a fourth last year. With a runner-up finish in the Duck Commander 500, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has finished sixth or better in his last four starts at Texas Motor Speedway.

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tightened up as it rubbered up. Then it got slick again, and we didn’t keep up with it enough. But it was a good day for us. I just needed to be a little bit better to be able to run the 18 (Busch) down.

The best we could really do was match his lap time there as the run went on and it was even tough to do that. Just got to get a little bit better, but we’re getting close and we’re right there every week.”

points update

Daniel Suarez remained atop the XFINITY Series driver standings following the O’Reilly Auto Parts 300, but his lead has shrunk to the smallest of margins. Suarez started the o’reilly auto parts 300 notes race third, but finished 16th and one lap down as a result jones continues to impress of spinning in Turn 4 on Lap NASCAR XFINITY Series rookie Erik Jones continued his streak of success at Texas Motor Speed- 77 and running his run in the 200-lap race. Elliott way with a runner-up finish in Friday night’s O’Reilly Sadler took advantage with a seventh-place finish Auto Parts 300. Jones has run just three XFINI- to close to a point on Suarez. Justin Allgaier finTY Series races in his young career at TMS, but ished sixth to close to nine points of Suarez as he sits in third in the standings. Ryan Seig made the has finished first, biggest move in the standing, vaulting four spots fourth and second, to 11th after he finished a season-high 10th. respectively, for an average finish of 2.3 per race. That win, which came in last April’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300, also was the first of his XFINITY Series career. Jones tried to challenge eventual winner Kyle Busch nearly midway through the 200-lap race as it seemed he had a car capable of doing so. But Jones’ No. 20 JGR Toyota team was penalized for having a crewman go over the pit wall too soon on Lap 83 when he entered with the lead. He fell to 18th as a result of the penalty and although he drove all the way up to second, he never was able to lead again. “We just didn’t quite make the adjustment we needed to on that last stop,” he said. “We had a really good car that ran when we got the lead and pass Kyle.

Then getting the penalty didn’t help, but it wasn’t the reason we ran second either. We just didn’t take a big enough swing to free it up. The track just Te x a s M o t o r S p e e d w a y | D u c k C o m m a n d e r 5 0 0 W e e k e n d R e c a p

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Life Comes Full Circle For Member Of The Robertson Family Life has truly come full circle for Rowdy Robertson, the latest addition to the family of Willie and Korie Robertson.

A year ago at the Duck Commander 500, Rowdy Robertson, a 12-year-old from Graham, Texas, arrived at the race with a representative from a local adoption agency and was told that he was getting the opportunity to watch a NASCAR race and possibly meet some famous drivers or celebrities from the popular A&E reality television series, “Duck Dynasty.”

Rowdy got to meet Willie and Korie, but little did the boy know the intimate visit was more than a celebrity meet and greet. The Robertsons were considering adopting another child and fell in love with Rowdy in their initial visit, which came in The Speedway Club at TMS on the day of last year’s race. Fast forward to this past Saturday night’s Duck Commander 500, where Rowdy now is a member of the family and had the opportunity to serve as the co-Grand Marshal with his new stepsister Sadie and deliver the command for the drivers to start their engines.

“Every year at TMS is exciting,” Korie said. This year is particularly exciting. We met our new son at the race last year. The race will always mean a lot to our family.”

Rowdy and Sadie Robertson gave the command to start their engines to the drivers last Saturday at the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

The Robertsons now have a total of six children with the addition of three adoptions - Rowdy, Rebecca and Will - to their three biological kids, Sadie, John Luke and Bella.

The Robertsons also used this past race week as a platform for Drive Adoption, a program they created to raise awareness about adoption (www.driveadoption. org).

“I’ve always made sure people know it’s not just wealthy people or celebrities who can adopt because they have the means,” Willie said during his recent visit at the speedway’s media day. “We’re not saying it is easy to adopt. It’s not. It’s not like bringing a puppy home. It’s a human being. We realize there are challenges. We’re just trying to create the awareness so that people will at least be open to it and see themselves doing it through us.”

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FINAL PIT STOP

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VIDEO SOUND BITES, SOCIAL MEDIA SNAPSHOT

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LIL’ HOSS TV

Kyle Busch and Texas Motor Speedway President Eddie Gossage speak to the media from Victory Lane following Busch’s victory in the Duck Commander 500 on Saturday night. Click video to play.

FROM THE TWITTERVERSE

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SHELTON AT TMS

SINGER FILMS NBC PROMO AT TMS

More than 1,000 local residents and race fans showed up Friday morning of the Duck Commander 500 NASCAR doubleheader to be part of a NASCAR on NBC shoot featuring a performance by country music superstar Blake Shelton.

He will appear in NBC Sports’ 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup opening theme that debuts on July 2nd when the network’s broadcast coverage of the series begins with the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway.

Photo credit: NBC Sports Group/Rick Kern

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