Kyle Busch was a bit disgruntled Monday. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was never really competitive in Monday’s rain-delayed Monster Energy NASCAR Cup series Gander RV 400 at Dover International Speedway.
Running outside the top 10 most of the afternoon and smacking the wall on lap 251 and reporting to his crew that his No. 18 Toyota was “fucking killed”, he did manage to make a late race charge to finish 10th. He has now finished in the top-10 in all 11 races so far this season, tying a record set by Morgan Shepherd in 1990.
Despite that valiant effort, Busch was disappointed after the race, with most of the blame directed towards NASCAR’s new high downforce package raced for the first time at Dover.
“The package sucks,” he said right after getting out of the car. “No fucking question about it. It’s terrible. All I can do is bitch about it and fall on deaf ears and we’ll come back with the same thing it in the fall.”
After cooling down a bit, he seemed a bit calmer. After all his 10th place finish was his best in the spring race at Dover since a 4th in 2013.
“I kind of thought we were off as a program but obviously the 19 (Martin Truex Jr.) won the race,” he said. “We were probably going to end up about eighth but then I got into the wall at the start of the last stage so after that I was just sort of hanging on with my Pedigree Camry. It would have been nice to run better. It would have been nice to lead laps. When you run better you have something to hang your hat on, so we obviously have some work to do before we come back here in the fall.”
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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