Busch could rewrite story at Indy
Successful at track, driver aims to get first win of season
Kyle Busch has one of those annoying mileposts ahead, like a big round-number birthday that no one is going to let go, even if you’re not so much into talking about it.
Kyle Busch would certainly rather return to Indianapolis Motor Speedway this weekend being talked about as the twotime defending race winner instead of as a perennial series contender who somehow hasn’t won a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race since his visit to the storied track last July.
But that’s where the Joe Gibbs Racing driver finds himself right now, after another weekend of unfulfilled promise in a season full of them.
Busch led 95 of 301 laps Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and paced the field on a pit stop with 63 laps left, but he was undone by two speeding penalties and finished 12th. Busch, the 2015 series champion, can’t even use the cover of the JGR organization being shut out because teammate Denny Hamlin broke through at New Hampshire for his first win of the season and qualified for the playoffs.
Focusing on the positive aspects of the notable weekend ahead, Busch could become the first to win the Brickyard 400 three consecutive times, a feat he said would be “special.” But he’s curious how this iteration of NASCAR’s aerodynamic package affects what he has learned as a driver and how crew chief Adam Stevens has applied that to his No. 18 Toyota.
Busch’s prospects for qualifying for the playoff remain solid. He’d make it unless four drivers earn their first wins this year in the final seven races of the regular season — or if there are three first-time winners and Joey Logano, whose victory at Richmond Raceway was encumbered because of a penalty, wins again.
Neither of those scenarios seems likely. Busch is third in points and seems a cer- tain playoff qualifier, but his lack of playoff points (five) because of a dearth of wins would immediately endanger him in the postseason.
Of course, he could advance through the three rounds of playoff racing with victories, but if he were able to flick a switch, he would have done it by now. He has led races with fewer than 10 laps left three times this season. He had led at least one lap in all but five races all season. He has led at least 100 laps four times. But he hasn’t been able to pull off a victory.
Certainly, Busch’s overall performance — those laps-led numbers show he actually has been quite successful — suggests that he could win at any time. After all, he did win three in a row in 2015 (culminating at Indianapolis) to overcome missing the first 11 races with a broken right leg and left foot to qualify for the postseason and win the championship.
But the number that must haunt Busch currently is 35, the number of races in his career-worst winless streak. And unlike 2015, he doesn’t have the freedom of a dogged pursuit of a goal that should not have been realistic after he crashed into a concrete wall in the season-opening Xfinity Series race at Daytona International Speedway.
There is just the knowledge that after winning four times last season — for an organization that won 12 collectively — and finishing third in the standings, Busch is expected to have collected some of those upwards of eight victories owner Joe Gibbs thinks could have been his this season. Busch has 38 career Cup victories and has never finished a season winless, beginning with his first full campaign in 2005.
The evolution of the “new” Kyle Busch has been heavily documented through his marriage and then fatherhood. Notwithstanding the occasional unsuccessful accosting of Logano, mic drop or standard driver-issue barb, he has seemed better equipped to process and proceed from these types of moments. But going 12 months without a win must be especially frustrating.
And just like those big round-number birthdays or stressful anniversaries, emotion is likely to be close to the surface. There isn’t even a Hallmark card for it.