The Nationwide Series travels to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., this weekend for Saturday's Copart 300.
Points leader Kyle Busch is expected to run well there. After all, he'll be going for his third-consecutive win at the track. He won at Auto Club Speedway back in February and won this race a year ago. He's also finished second there twice.
Busch has all but given up on matching his 10 wins from a year ago, but he's still looking to get as many as he can before the curtain falls on the 2009 season.
“I’m looking for wins,” Busch said. “I’d love to break the win record, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen this year. I’m running out of races.”
Busch may have a hefty 245-point lead over second-place driver Carl Edwards, but Edwards, along with third-place driver Brad Keselowski haven't thrown in the towel yet.
While both Edwards and Keselowski are a long way from catching Busch, Keselowski does have a legitimate shot of catching Edwards to take his second spot. He has 62 points to make up on Edwards if he wants to do so, but Auto Club Speedway, if history repeats itself, may not be the place for him to do it. In six starts there, Keselowski's average finish is 32.7.
“California has notoriously been a rough place for me to race," Keselowski said. "Between that bad wreck in 2007 and just the overall bad luck we’ve had as a team, this isn’t my favorite spot on the schedule. I’m hopeful though that this is the weekend we can get things turned around though."
Meanwhile, the battle getting the most attention, perhaps, is the fight for fifth. With NASCAR merging the Nationwid and Camping World Truck Series banquets for this season, only the top-five finishers in each series will be recognized at the awards ceremony. Plus the title for fifth seems to be the most contested in the series right now, as a close battle between Steve Wallace and rookie Justin Allgaier has ensued.
Allgaier has the position at the current time, but Wallace wants it. The two drivers have traded the fifth and sixth spots the last three weeks. Right now, Allgaier has a scant 13-point advantage over Wallace.
Television coverage for Saturday's race is slated for a 4 p.m. ET start on ESPN2.
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