With the NASCAR Nationwide Series and the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series traveling to Fort Worth's Texas Motor Speedway next weekend for their annual affair, I thought it would be neat to go back and talk about last year's Busch (now Nationwide) Series race. I was there to watch it from pit road, which makes it even neater.

It was a cold and blustery day in Fort Worth for the NASCAR Busch Series O’Reilly Auto Parts 300. However, the racing was hot and fast. Rookie David Ragan started from the pole but his Ford quickly fell to the middle of the pack once the green flag flew at 2:15 pm. Kyle Busch led 95 out of 200 laps, but finished 7th after making a slow green flag pit stop on lap 118. Casey Mears had a very competitive car and ended up 4th. The victor of the day was perennial favorite Matt Kenseth, who took the lead in his #17 Arby’s Ford with nine laps to go from Denny Hamlin. Kenseth battled back from an early-race spin in turn 2, which was caused by a cut right rear tire. The moments during the incident were very dramatic as his car was very close to being hit by at least four others. Kenseth also had to battle with his teammate, Carl Edwards, and the two made casual contact late in the race coming off turn 4. When asked if he was surprised that his teammate would race him so hard, he replied, “I’m not surprised at all. Let’s face it, even though he’s running for points, I don’t think he’s too concerned with losing 40 or 50 points since he has such a big lead right now.” Denny Hamlin’s #20 Chevrolet missed a beat on lap 191, which helped Kenseth to get past. Kenseth said “I’m not sure I would have been able to pass him if he hadn’t gotten loose and made that mistake. I don’t know what line he would have taken.” Hamlin, who has matured immensely since his rookie season in 2005, admitted his error. “I just got loose and it was totally my fault,” he said. There were a lot of crashes in Saturday’s race, which made it seem like a throwback to the days when Texas Motor Speedway was much harder to drive and had one of its two original configurations. The first major incident took place on lap 69 when Shane Huffman spun his #88 Navy Chevrolet off turn four and onto the frontstretch. He was then collected by Reed Sorenson’s Dodge and hit by the #47 Clorox Ford of Jon Wood. Though their cars were heavily damaged, Sorenson and Wood returned to the race, but Huffman was done for the day. Colombian superstar Juan Pablo Montoya had a good run going until he left pit road missing a lug nut with 40 laps to go. He then scraped the wall after the restart and on lap 180, he got together with Marcos Ambrose and they both crashed on the backstretch, ending the race for the two rookie of the year candidates.