Nationwide Series Capsule: Dollar General 200 at Phoenix

The Scoop: Kyle Busch wins the Dollar General 200 at Phoenix, his first Nationwide Series win since September 2011. Busch leads the first part of the race, enters pit box wrong and then speeds leaving box, then drives from 23rd to the lead. Brad Keselowski stretches fuel, tries to hold off Busch on 2nd to last restart, and finishes 2nd. Sam Hornish Jr. (and several others) gets caught up in and receives heavy damage in Johanna Long's lap 3 spin, spins again, but bounces back to finish 7th. Multi-NASCAR champ Jimmie Johnson struggles in rare NNS race, but puts on a heckuva battle, racing door-to-door with rookie Kyle Larson, who rebounds from a couple of rookie mistakes to just barely lose the race with Johnson for 12th.
140 Characters or Less:  Busch comes back & dominates. Ends winless drought. Hornish Jr.'s jalopy gets top 10. Larson loses 12th to champ Johnson. #WelcomeBackRowdy
Handsome Boy Modeling School Stud of the Race: Kyle Busch - Led the most laps and bounced back after to lead after speeding exiting pit road during first round of stops. He restarted 23rd after that penalty and drove forward to the win.
North Korean Missle Dud: Travis Pastrana - Made contact with the wall, damaging the No. 60 Ford on lap 2. Ends the race 28th, 11 laps down and his killer paint scheme isn't seen again after about lap 5.
Never Fear, Underdogs Are Here: Mike Bliss - He's doing what he did all of last year: achieving in mid-level equipment. Bliss hung around in the top 20 all day and let a few of the big dogs fall out to finish 14th. As stacked as the Nationwide Series is this season, the Tri-Star Motorsports team and Bliss will do well to consistently score these kinds of finishes.
You Can Comeback, But You Can't Stay Here: Sam Hornish Jr. - Caught in up in Long's wreck on lap 3, the former Phoenix winner's day appeared done. But the No. 12 crew went into championship beast mode and bandaged that Ford like whoa. Hornish drove up to 16th, spun out again on the slick Phoenix surface, then shifted into "nothing to lose" mode. He and teammate Keselowski used fuel mileage to gain track position and gamble for a better finish. Hornish miraculously finished 7th.
Wheel of Misfortune: Joe Nemechek - Nelson Piquet Jr. tagged Nemechek fairly early in the race in an over-aggressive move, spinning the No. 87 into the wall and out of the race. Both are full-time drivers in the NNS, Nemechek the seasoned vet and former champ and Piquet Jr. the stock car novice. Piquet Jr. made several similar moves in the race and finished outside the top 10. Nemechek certainly owes Piquet Jr. a favor.
Head-Scratcher Crown: Johanna Long - Long drove deep into a corner, hit Hornish Jr., dove low, washed up the track, hit the wall, and then bounced across traffic. The early crash ended her day and sent Jamie Dick and Alex Bowman (top-5 finisher at Daytona) to the garage for a long time. Long finished 40th - last - even before the start-and-park cars called it a day. Her progress in racing has been fun to watch. She and the mid-level No. 70 ML Motorsports team are looking to become top 15 contenders in their 2nd year together. But she is going to have to cut back on mistakes like that, if she wants to make the most of her partial NNS schedule.
Ghost Driver: Brian Scott - Finished a non-descript 10th in a race that saw teammate Kevin Harvick run near the front, until he blew a tire and crashed. Scott, meanwhile, didn't crash (like he has plenty more times before), but has largely gone unnoticed in his first two races in the No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevy.
Georgia On My Mind: Peachtree City's Reed Sorenson (18th) and Tucker's Ryan Sieg (21st) each had clean days for small teams. Sorenson's TMG Motorsports No. 40 went without sponsorship this week, but both Sorenson and team officials tell News/Talk WSB that Sorenson is committed to remaining in the car all season and not start and park. TMG teammate and Canton driver Chase Miller (39th) was the first start-and-park of the day. Sieg made his NNS debut in the No. 51, replacing suspended driver Jeremy Clements (the team originally announced Charles Lewandowski as Clements' replacement driver). Buford team SR2 Motorsports also kept a clean nose. Blake Koch piloted the No. 24 to 16th and Jason White (who ran with Sieg and RSS Racing in NCWTS Daytona race) finished 22nd.
Next: Las Vegas Motor Speedway next Saturday at 4:15 p.m. The first 1.5-mile race of the season will make for an ever greater disparity between the funded teams and the smaller ones. And Busch is going to be a major factor at his hometrack, by the way. Look for the two-fer.