Cup leader Busch set to hit the road course
Amid sport’s changes, driver is looking for third victory in Sonoma
Over the past 16 years, only three drivers have won two NASCAR Cup races at Sonoma Raceway. Two of them, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, are retired.
That leaves Kyle Busch, who won the race in 2008 and then did it again — in painful fashion — to jumpstart his magnificent 2015 season and his first Cup title.
He had missed 11 races that year after breaking his left foot and his right leg in a scary Xfinity Series crash at Daytona at the beginning of the season. A month after returning from a
long rehab process, he had to negotiate Sonoma’s serpentine road course and perform the intense left-foot braking needed to keep from flying off the track.
“After that race, the pain leveled off,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It probably went to a 4 the rest of the year. That race it was about a 10. With the plates and screws I had in
my foot, it made it rigid. It didn’t allow it to flex and flow like it’s supposed to.”
Busch, 33, arrives for Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 as the points leader over Kevin Harvick in the NASCAR Cup Series. Harvick has five wins and Busch four in the first 15 races, but Busch doesn’t see this as a two-horse race.
“It’s a long season, so things can certainly change,” he said. “We know there’s going to be other guys that will get better and they’ll come up and challenge us later on in the season. There’s a lot of guys that always kind of peak at the end.”
There have been 13 different winners at Sonoma in the past 16 NASCAR Cup races, a fact that can be chalked up to either parity or luck. Busch votes for luck. Getting the lead is critical, and doing that often requires good fortune, he says.
“It’s such a technical track, and it’s hard to pass,” he said. “The guys that get out front have the cleanest track, they have the most air on the car, and they have the coolest racetrack, too.
“It just seems to work when you can get yourself in that position out front. It’s hard for anybody else to chase you down and to get back by you. It’s a fun place to race; I enjoy going there. It’s technical and challenging, but also fun.”
It was plenty of fun in 2008 and 2015, both of which he won. But in the six years between, he never cracked the top 10 and his average finish was 25th. In the past three visits, he’s been first, seventh and fifth. He’s not sure what changed.
“We were always back and forth on what setup to run there,” he said. “We never really knew. We were all over the place. It takes a certain driving style to drive different setups. We kind of honed in on one that seems to work for us.”
The series has only two road courses, Watkins Glen (in New York on Aug. 5) being the other. Besides the different track configurations, the road courses are the only times the races go clockwise in the season.
“It’s a challenge to get back in that (road course) rhythm sometimes,” Busch said.
He got into a rhythm despite the foot pain in 2015. It helped immensely to be in the lead, he said.
“When you’re running 30th, it’s painful already,” he said. “But if you’re in the lead and have the adrenaline going, it makes you forget about the physical pain. So you just go out there and do the best you can and do your job.
“After the race was over, it certainly came back to me, how challenging that race was. It was one of the most trying things I’ve done in a long, long time. … I’ll always cherish that one.”
The Cup series has lost some of its best-known drivers in recent years, including Gordon, Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Danica Patrick. But Busch contends that NASCAR always finds a way to rejuvenate itself.
“I feel there’s plenty of star power here now for people to jump on and be a part of and enjoy,” said the driver whose win at Charlotte on May 19 made him the only current driver to have won on all 24 of the tracks in NASCAR’s current rotation. “The sport’s gone through transitions over the years. There were guys that were good in the ’50s and ’60s that moved out, and then guys in the ’70s and ’80s that moved out, and the ’80s and ’90s that moved out. It always moved in cycles.
“Right now I feel like we’ve got the most promising cycle because a lot of the drivers are young and have a long time (to go) in this sport. They certainly have the opportunity to be here for a while, and people can certainly jump on their bandwagon and be a part of it.”