<body><div><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0x9AdI_0vncM3kl00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0x9AdI_0vncM3kl00" width="1805" height="1280" >During its 24-year history, Kansas Speedway has been the site of some of NASCAR’s most dramatic moments.Who can forget Carl Edwards’ ill-fated Banzai move along the wall in trying to overtake Jimmie Johnson in 2008? Or Joey Logano’s spinning out Matt Kenseth in a 2015 playoff race? Or Aric Almirola’s being air-lifted from the track after a spectacular fiery collision with Danica Patrick in 2017?But nothing may ever match the stirring finish of last May’s AdventHealth 400 between Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher.“I’ll always remember it for sure,” said Larson, the series points leader heading into Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 Round of 12 playoff race at Kansas Speedway.After an overtime restart, Larson’s Chevrolet and Buescher’s Ford hurtled toward the green flag, their bumpers perfectly aligned with each other. The scoring pylon and timing and scoring system both indicated Buescher had won for the first time this season.The Fox broadcast crew declared Buescher the winner, and his crew members burst over the wall in celebration. Larson was resigned to a hard-fought, second-place finish.Hold everything. Subsequent reviews of replays and photos revealed Larson edged Buescher by 0.001 of a second. That’s one-thousand of a second. It was the closest finish in NASCAR history, edging the 0.002 margin by which Ricky Craven beat Kurt Busch at Darlington in 2003 and Jimmie Johnson beat Clint Bowyer at Talladega in 2011.Bowyer was in the booth at Kansas Speedway as part of Fox’s broadcast crew and recalled the chaos of the finish, which occurred a day after a photo finish determined the winner of the Kentucky Derby.“It depends on where we are in the booth with a vantage point,” he said of the announcers’ uncertainty. “You’re talking inches. There’s always controversy. The start-finish line had been painted and re-painted a little bit, and that caused some of the confusion. At the end of the day, it was like a photo finish in a horse race. There is technology that rapidly catches multiple frames per second that shows the finest line of measuring who won, and they gave it to Kyle.“The hardest part was Buescher all but had it won, and to have it taken from him right at the end … It was easy to hope that Buescher was the winner, but that wasn’t the case.”A despondent Buescher was nearly inconsolable after the race lamenting, “to be that close … I can’t even see it on the photo right now. It looks like somebody took it with a 1940s camera.”Since the heartbreaking finish, Buescher said he’s watched the replay innumerable times.“I’ve replayed it in my head no less than 100 times and that’s probably pretty conservative,” he said. “I’ve got a list of things I would do different going back and I just need to be in that situation again. I’m taking a lot of good things out of it, a couple bad but ultimately what I look at is that is the most competitive mile-and-a-half that we’ve had, ever in my career. I take that as the highlight of how it all went down and it kind of gets you through some of the bitterness of it as well. “We were all doing our best to try and laugh about it after the race and hung out and actually stayed and watched cars go through tech to make sure we were good and the 5 was good, obviously. Just trying to let it all unfold and take a breather. Our whole team stayed and was standing around the truck just trying to ultimately have some peace in the fact that we had a great day and try to laugh about the situation knowing that it was going to be a tough one for the rest of every one of our careers.”Larson, meanwhile, experienced a range of emotions after the race, going from thinking he finished second and learning a few seconds later that he had won,“Yeah, so I got across the line,” he said. “Initially when we hit the stripe I was like, ‘I think I got him.’ So I’m like, ‘Did we get him, did we get him?’ And no, it doesn’t look like we got him. He was pretty calm, so I was like, we definitely didn’t win, whatever, good job today, team, great day. Was kind of silent down the backstretch for a second, and I’m still kind of like, ‘Man, I hope I won.’ Then (my spotter) is like, ‘We won, we won, we won,’ going crazy. So then I’m going crazy, screaming, banging my head off the headrest, all of that, just going nuts.“I wanted to do some crazy burnouts and stuff, but we had a fresh built engine so couldn’t do that. So I’m like pumping the crowd up. I look ahead, like ‘Oh, shoot, Buescher is on the front stretch. I hope they didn’t reverse the call, and I’m over here looking like an idiot.”’The record for closest finish was nearly broken earlier this season at Atlanta when Daniel Suarez edged Ryan Blaney by 0.003 seconds in February at Atlanta, which like Kansas is a 1.5-mile track.“What’s really cool about our sport, is two of the three closest finishes in history happened this season,” said Bowyer, a 10-time winner in the Cup Series. “These mile-and-a-half tracks have proven to be really, really good for NASCAR. We’ve had some great finishes on the mile-and-a-halves, and that’s hard to do. I’ve been in this sport for 20 years and have not seen them consistently find a good product for mile-and-a-half until this new car. The Gen 7 has proven to be good on those, and these close, tight finishes are showcasing that.“Kansas Speedway has become the best 1.5-mile race track, arguably, that we have in NASCAR. It has become the ultimate, crazy chaotic racetrack. That’s real.”Though that narrow loss kept Buescher out of the post-season, he somewhat salvaged his season by winning as a non-playoff driver at Watkins Glen two weeks ago.Larson, meanwhile, owns a series-best five wins this season, including last week at Bristol. But none was as sweet as the victory at Kansas.“There are definitely wins you can kind of get lost in the distance a little bit, but when you have the closest, to this point, finish in Cup Series history, I don’t think you’re ever going to forget about it, even if it gets broken someday,” said Larson, the 2021 NASCAR Cup champion who owns 28 career wins.“Yeah, just great to be on this side of it. I probably would still remember it, though, if I ran second.”</div></body>

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Can Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 match the finish of the last NASCAR race at Kansas Speedway?

During its 24-year history, Kansas Speedway has been the site of some of NASCAR’s most dramatic moments. Who can forget Carl Edwards’ ill-fated Banzai move along the wall in trying to overtake Jimmie Johnson in 2008? Or Joey Logano’s spinning out Matt Kenseth in a 2015 playoff race? Or Aric Almirola’s being air-lifted from the track after a spectacular fiery collision with Danica Patrick in 2017?

Can Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 match the finish of the last NASCAR race at Kansas Speedway?

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