Kyle Busch has a dug a pretty deep hole it seems.
Facing a still uncertain future, at least publicly, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver (currently) wants nothing more than to leave JGR on a high note.
If he hopes to get his third Cup title with the team this season, it will take something Busch himself admits he seems to have little of: luck.
The two-time Kansas winner started 20th Sunday and for the early part of the race was running competitively inside the top 10, finishing Stage 1 seventh.
During a round of pit stops on lap 111 however, a tire got away from his crew and NASCAR penalized him for equipment interference sending him to the back of the field. Working his way forward, Busch ran into further trouble when his Toyota went for a solo spin coming out of Turn 4 on lap 139. The car slid across the front stretch infield grass, and he was able to continue, but was never competitive again. Busch finished 26th, 2 laps down.
“Just got really loose and it snapped around me,” Busch said. “Then I had damage from going through the grass. Kind of ruined the rest of our day, but it was whatever happened on that pit stop that set us backwards to get us back in traffic there. Tried to make an adjustment to the car to make it faster and it did make it faster, but definitely made it looser.”
Worse yet, Busch heads to the final race of Round 1, at Bristol, below the cutoff line to make it to the next round of the Playoffs.
Busch admitted he doesn’t have a great deal of confidence after a blown engine left him with a DNF and 30th place finish in the opening race of the Playoffs at Darlington.
“Not with the luck of this year, nope,” he said. “We’ll go and try hard and if what Bristol has always been to me occurs, we’ll be fine. With the way this year has been, if that occurs, it’s going to be ugly.”
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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