BRISTOL, Tenn. – Kyle Busch likes his chances.
Last week at Texas Motor Speedway, the reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion swept the XFINITY Series and Cup races — a week after winning both the Camping World Truck Series and Cup races at Martinsville Speedway.
Busch and Harry Gant are the only drivers to have swept consecutive NASCAR weekends, a feat Gant accomplished in 1991 at Richmond and Dover. No driver has ever swept three consecutive NASCAR weekends – yet.
But Busch think he has a realistic shot, even though he’ll have to win Saturday’s XFINITY Series race under a completely new Dash 4 Cash format featuring two 50-lap heat races and a 200-lap main event.
“Coming to Bristol, it’s been a really good place for me on the Truck side, the XFINITY side and on the Cup Series side,” Busch said. “But I think the XFINITY Series side – I’m not going to say it’s going to be easy as it’s going to be a little different this weekend with the heat races and things like that.
“If we can win a heat and then start up front for the feature and how the pit strategy plays out with it only being 200 laps and seeing what tire wear is all about here, I think we’ve got a really good shot there. Then of course we’ve got the 500 lapper (Food City 500 NSCS race) on Sunday (1 p.m. ET on FOX) and that’s going to be harder to figure out.”
Busch and crew chief Adam Stevens also have been preparing for Bristol, trying to eliminate the one deficiency in their performance in last August’s night race.
“We were good here last fall and led a lot of laps, we ran up front, and we weren’t very good on the long run, but Adam and I both went to work over the offseason and especially this week getting prepared for this weekend and knowing that we can come here with a better shot to win this one.
“I’d like to think that there’s a good shot to do it here, and then we’ll hopefully be talking about whether we can do it or not at Richmond. It would be a pretty good story.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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