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Triad Takes 1-2 at Talladega

from truckseries.com

Talladega, AL (October 30, 2010) - Kyle Busch charged inside Aric Almirola at virtually the last moment to win Saturday's Mountain Dew 250 Camping World Truck Series race in a thrilling three-wide finish at Talladega Superspeedway.

The race ended in a green-white-checkered finish, and Almirola led Busch and Johnny Sauter through the trioval on the last lap. Approaching the checkered, Busch slipped inside Almirola, dancing along the yellow line marking the inside boundary of the racing surface, and beat him to the finish by .002 of a second, the closest finish in series history.

Sauter went to the outside approaching the finish line and took third as the trucks made a three-wide crossing.

"That's cool," said Busch, who won for the sixth time this season in the truck series. "I didn't want to do it. Aric deserved to win the race. I had Johnny pushing me. I couldn't go too high because he would have gotten under me. I had to keep going. It was crazy there at the end."

Almirola objected to the finish order in a meeting with NASCAR officials after the race. Almirola said replays clearly showed that Busch drove below the yellow line to make the pass, but he said NASCAR officials told him that Busch was regaining control of his truck as he crossed the line.

"The reason they gave me was that Kyle's truck was sideways when he was next to me and that what made him go below the yellow line was that he was trying to regain control of his truck," Almirola said. "I guess if you get out of control and go below the yellow line and save it, it's OK to advance.

"I don't have a clear understanding of the rule, I guess."

Busch said he was trying to get his truck under control nearing the line.

"When I was alongside the 51 , he kind of came back to me, and it got real loose and sideways," he said. "I don't know if I got near it or below it or on it [the yellow line]. I was working on getting my truck straight."

After watching the television replay, he said, "Judgement call. It's on NASCAR."

NASCAR vice president Robin Pemberton said contact between the two trucks forced Busch to the yellow line, although Almirola said there was no contact.

"Due to side-contact him and the 51 got together when he went below the 51," Pemberton said. "Actually, he was spinning outside, and he was correcting it. There was plenty of room. [It's] not like he put himself down there where there wasn't any room. The contact put him there. … We looked at it two to three times. We had three to four good camera angles, and there was absolutely no question whatsoever."