Kyle Busch dominates return to Super Late Model racing, wins Howie Lettow Memorial 150

Kyle Busch swept the Swiss Colony Howie Lettow Memorial 150 on Tuesday night, leading every practice session and ultimately winning the race from the pole (overcoming an invert) at the legendary Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wisc.

Busch started the race from 14th following the invert and quickly sliced through the field, leading by lap 11. This was hardly a surprise after time trials where Busch turned a fast lap that was 3/8th quicker than the one turned by second-quickest John Hunter Nemechek.

Busch took the top spot from Boris Jurkovic and never looked back, leading until lap 115 when the race was called for darkness. The Milwaukee Mile does not have permanent lighting and temporary lights were erected for previous twilight events at the Speedway.

Following a completely masterful performance, Busch gave all the credit to his team at Kyle Busch Motorsports.

“This win came from the shop for sure,” Busch said. “This race probably came together two-or-three months ago when we first put the sponsorship together with Monster Energy and support from the local Budweiser distributor.

“We wanted to run this race last year but things just didn’t pan out. We actually had a lot of work to do because this was actually a wrecked car that we had sitting in the shop from two years ago that we had to put back together. It took a little bit to do that but it turned out pretty good.”

Defending winner Travis Sauter and Uncle Johnny Sauter might have had the best chance to chase down the Sprint Cup Series ace but simply ran out of daylight and finished second and third respectively.

As it turns out, there wasn’t a whole lot different between Travis’ dominating performance in last year’s race and this year except for the fact that Busch showed up and was even faster.

“We weren’t good in the first half and these guys were just passing me left and right,” Travis Sauter said. “I was just hanging on at this point. We made some adjustments and got better but Kyle was just in his own league.”

Jacob Goede and Chris Wimmer rounded out the top-five.

The race was delayed (under caution) for about 20 minutes in the first half when James Swan, Mason Mingus, Erik Darnell and Brandon Hermiller tangled off the exit of turn four. Swan slammed into the orange barriers at the entrance of pit road, completely destroying his car and further delaying the race due to the damage to the track.

The barriers had to be replaced before the race could resume and that may have made the difference in running the race to conclusion.

Matt Kenseth was expected to contend for the win but brought out the first caution on lap 15 when his engine expired on the backstretch. He would finish 41st and join his son, Ross’ pit crew for the remainder of the race.

The younger Kenseth finished 24th.

The complete results (plus audio of the post-race press conference) can be found below.

Howie Lettow Memorial 150 Race Results: