Kobyluck avoids calamity to win East 200

LAKEVILLE, Conn. -- Matt Kobyluck said he felt really confident about his chances of winning yesterday's NASCAR Busch East Series race at Lime Rock Park's seven-turn, 1.53-mile road course. Until, that is, Kobyluck seemed to run out of luck when his car came diving down the last downhill turn of the 82-lap race, hit a patch of oil, and skidded off course.

"First thing that came to my mind was that our day was done," Kobyluck said.

Kobyluck survived that chaotic corner -- he also overcame a temporary loss of power 500 yards from the finish line -- to beat runner-up Sean Caisse, of Pelham, N.H., and third-place finisher Jeff Anton, of Russell, Mass., in the Mohegan Sun Busch East 200.

It was Kobyluck's second career triumph at Lime Rock Park; he also won Oct. 1, 2005.

"When there's oil on the track like that, and it's spread so wide, you don't have any way to get around it," Kobyluck said. "You're carrying so much speed, you hit the breaks, you're going to slide; you hit the oil, you slide.

"The only thing I could do was sneak through there."

Suffice it to say, Kobyluck, of Uncasville, Conn., didn't do any sneaking around.

Instead, the pole-sitter trampled his way through the calamitous corner when his No. 40 Mohegan Sun Chevrolet splashed through a pool of fluid laid down by Scott Bouley's broken transmission, causing it to skid off course.

"I've been off course there before, so I know you can save it," said Kobyluck, who thrice led the race for 47 laps. "I got so far off and I was so far sideways that I didn't think there was any way of saving it. But somehow, someway, I saved it from spinning out."

As his spotter barked the command "Go! Go! Go!" over the radio, Kobyluck immediately went to his throttle, but it didn't respond. He had accidentally shut down the car's ignition when his elbow hit the kill switch as he crossed up his arms trying to wrestle with the steering wheel.

"My guy's on the radio going, 'Go! Go! Go!' and I'm trying to 'Go! Go! Go!' but I can't," he said. "I'm hitting the ignition, I'm hitting the throttle, I'm trying to grab a gear, and I can't tell whether it's running or not because I'm sliding through the grass and there's so much noise I can't hear anything."

Through it all, Kobyluck kept his composure.

"Finally I hit the kill switch, and it started," said Kobyluck. "I grabbed the gear, and I guess I came across first, somehow."

Mike Olsen, who was nipping at Kobyluck's rear bumper for much of the final four laps, was running second before he, too, went off course after losing traction in that final corner. Olsen, who led once for 17 laps before surrendering to Kobyluck on Lap 78, was sent spinning off course when he also hit the oil patch.

It proved a fortuitous turn of events for Caisse, who started from the rear of the 29-car field after breaking his transmission in Friday's qualifying session. Caisse overcame that setback to record his fifth top-five result of the season and third runner-up effort to pull within 11 points of third-place Peyton Sellers in the Busch East points (1,418-1,407). Anton, meanwhile, recorded his career best finish.

"Because we broke our transmission, we had a short-track gear ratio in our gearbox," said Caisse, who led once for one lap to pick up 5 bonus points. "Man, I could get a wicked jump on those guys on the restarts, but it was still a pretty exciting race for us."

But not nearly as exciting as Kobyluck's finish. It enabled Kobyluck, who entered the race trailing series points leader Joey Logano by 188 points (1,494-1,306), to whittle nearly in half Logano's lead (to 92 points; 1,588-1,496) after the rookie driver, who won for the fourth time this season in the July 28 Busch East race at Adirondack International Speedway in Beaver Falls, N.Y., took an early off-road excursion that saw him finish a season-worst 23d, eight laps back.

"If the circumstances that happened at Adirondack didn't happen, we'd be within 10 points right now," said Kobyluck, referring to his 10th-place finish at Adirondack, where he was knocked out of the lead by a black-flag penalty for jumping a late restart. "We made big gains today, and it was huge. We needed a big day like today."

Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com.