Kyle Busch in overdrive since playoff flag dropped
Four takeaways from Dover International Speedway as the NASCAR playoffs, now trimmed to a dirty dozen drivers, roll on to Charlotte Motor Speedway this week.
A new favorite?
Based on a sensational regular season and an obnoxious number of stage wins, Martin Truex Jr. entered the opening week of the playoffs as the championship favorite.
Three weeks in, Kyle Busch might be top dog.
Busch has won two consecutive races in the playoffs and, barring pit-road issues, could have won the opener at Chicagoland Speedway. He has led 302 of the 967 laps raced in the playoffs.
Truex sits atop the playoff standings with an 18-point edge on Busch, but Busch clearly has momentum.
He isn’t buying the idea that he’s the champion-in-waiting, however.
“You know, I don’t know that there’s necessarily a favorite,” said Busch, who won the title in
2015. “Maybe it closes our gap that the 78 (Truex) had on us a little bit to where I still think it’s
78, 18 (Busch), 42 (Kyle Larson), and there’s different distances between us each and every week.
“It’s all about getting the stars to align and doing your job and having everything go your way.”
Seconding that emotion: It only seems as if Chase Elliott has finished second in every Cup race he’s run.
The total actually is five. The misery index, when calculated by Elliott’s superhuman standards, is astronomical.
The hope is that he never got a B in school. If so, he probably ripped his photo from the pages of the yearbook.
Elliott takes failure to win very hard. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime. He has performed well in one of racing ’s biggest seats — the No. 24 Chevrolet once driven by Jeff Gordon, and, despite his disappointment at finishing second to Busch on Sunday, he rides into the second round of the playoffs as one of only 12 drivers with a shot at winning the championship
Want some real second-place pain? Imagine the case of Harry Gant, who started Cup racing in 1980 and finished second 10 times — yes, 10 — before finally winning in April 1982 at Martinsville Speedway.
Gant went on to win 18 Cup races and became one of the sport’s most popular drivers.
And then there’s Bill Elliott, Chase’s father and a Cup champion. He finished second eight times before winning.
Johnson rebounds: The playoffs — and indeed the second half of the season — haven’t been robust for seven-time and defending champion Jimmie Johnson.
Dover is one of his best tracks, however, and he found speed Sunday, finishing third.
To Johnson’s credit, he was more concerned with consoling Hendrick Motorsports teammate Elliott, who was distraught after failing to win, than in celebrating a good. finish for himself.
Johnson remains very much in the championship hunt, sitting in fifth place, 42 points behind Truex.
He owns eight wins at Charlotte, where Hendrick cars typically excel. If Johnson is to win a record eighth championship, CMS might be the launching point.
Manufacturer tangle: Although Toyota has won all three playoff races, the 12 playoff spots are evenly divided — four Toyotas, four Fords and four Chevrolets.
Richard Childress Racing was the team enduring the toughest day at Dover, as Austin Dillon and Ryan Newman dropped out of the championship hunt.