Green

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Jeff Green elected not to pit during a late caution Saturday, and the gamble paid off with a win in the inaugural Mr. Goodcents 300 at Kansas Speedway.

It was his second straight Busch series win and fourth of the season.

Green's No. 10 Ford began smoking in the third turn of the final lap, but he was able to nurse it across the finish line. Then it quit on him entirely while he was smoking his tires in celebration.

"I thought I ran out of gas doing the burnout, but the engine blew up," said Green, who finished 2.129 seconds ahead of Hank Parker Jr.'s Chevrolet on the new 1½-mile tri-oval. "There must have been something wrong with it. I've never blown up an engine doing a burnout before."

Greg Biffle finished third, followed in the top 10 by Matt Kenseth, Jason Keller, Jimmie Johnson, Tony Raines, Buckshot Jones, Mark Green and Mike McLaughlin. Johnson's top 10 finish came after a 38th-place start.

Green's win, on the heels of his MBNA.com 200 win last week in Dover, moved him past Keller into second place in the standings. Both made significant gains on series leader Kevin Harvick, who crashed in the 55th lap and finished 38th.

Harvick led Keller by 307 points going into Saturday's race. He now leads Green by 187, with Keller seven out of second.

	“	It's a disgrace to NASCAR, and a disgrace to the other drivers out there. It's absolutely amazing that they can let people drive around at half speed.”
		—Kevin Harvick

"I hate that for Kevin," said Green, who will be Harvick's teammate next year with Richard Childress Racing. "I want to beat him, but I want to beat him on the racetrack, not with him in the garage area putting his fenders back on."

Green was third behind Keller and Biffle on the 172nd of 200 laps when the caution flag came out for oil on the track. They went into the pits, but he stayed out after a quick feint toward pit road.

"I couldn't believe those guys went in," he said. "I couldn't get past them, because my car was really tight behind them. But once I got out front, it was a different car."

Harvick's crash provided the only real drama in a race that saw five cautions for a total of 29 laps.

Harvick, trying to pass the lapped car of Andy Kirby between the first and second turns, clipped Kirby's right front fender and spun into the wall. He returned late in the race, his fenders gone, but completed only 76 laps.

"It's a disgrace to NASCAR, and a disgrace to the other drivers out there," said Harvick, who shook his fist at Kirby after the crash. "It's absolutely amazing that they can let people drive around at half speed."

Kirby contended -- and video replays appeared to show -- that he was trying to let Harvick pass, but Harvick came down on him. "He was over there raising Cain with me, but I wouldn't take out a fast car on purpose," Kirby said. "When you have a car as slow as we were running, and as fast as he was, you'd think he'd be a little more cautious."

Kevin LePage, who started on the pole, lost the lead to Robby Gordon in the first lap but regained it in the 31st. He led until running out of gas on lap 127 and had to coast into the pits from turn three. He dropped to 14th and finished 12th.