Kyle Busch rises above gridlock in Kentucky

SPARTA, Ky. — Kyle Busch figured the best way to beat the traffic on Saturday night at Kentucky Speedway.

He simply stayed out of it.

Busch rolled to victory in the inaugural Sprint Cup race at the 1.5-mile oval, pulling away from Jimmie Johnson on a restart with 3 laps to go to collect his third victory of the season and jump into the points lead with two months to go before NASCAR’s Chase for the championship begins.

“This is cool man,” Busch said. “This is right up there with the best of them.”

For now anyway. The way Busch is surging, better days almost certainly lay ahead.

Track officials hope they can say the same for their venue, which experienced some ugly growing pains during its first step into the spotlight. A massive traffic jam made the trip in a tortuous test of patience.

Even the drivers weren’t immune. Denny Hamlin nearly missed the driver’s meeting while getting stuck in the snarl.

Not exactly the kind of Cup debut Speedway Motorsports Inc. owner Bruton Smith was hoping for when he successfully lobbied NASCAR officials to let him move a date from Atlanta Motor Speedway to the quirky oval in the northern Kentucky hills.

“It was one of those things,” said Hamlin, who finished 11th after starting from the back of the 43-car field. “You’ve got a lot of fans that want to watch the first race. You can’t do anything about a two-lane road.”

And the drivers can’t seem to do anything about Busch, who moved into the points lead as the season reached its halfway point. He leads Edwards by 4 points heading into next week’s race at New Hampshire with about two months to go before the Chase for the championship begins.

Kevin Harvick began the night with the points lead, but slipped to third in the standings after finishing 16th.

David Reutimann slipped past Johnson to finish second. Ryan Newman was fourth, followed by Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth.

“He was strong all night long,” Johnson said of Busch. “Spent a lot of time chasing him (and) watched him inch away from me the longer the run went on.”

It’s a feeling the fans who spent hours in gridlock on Interstate 71 could echo. Cars were still packed up several miles from the track when the race began, with some eventually turning around when track officials went to their exit plan when the race reached its halfway point.

Speedway officials acknowledged the traffic was worse than they anticipated and promised to work on remedying issue before next year’s event.