FORT WORTH, Texas — Kyle Busch entered the second round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs not knowing if he would advance to the third round.
It’s not that he doesn’t have confidence in his abilities. It’s just that his season had been so up and down.
“Realistically, I have no clue,” Busch said the day before the Round of 12 opened at Texas Motor Speedway.
He later said something a little bit prophetic: “I would like to think that normal races, normal circumstances, we can make it through this round.”
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The next day, the round opened with abnormal circumstances, sending the two-time Cup champion into last place among the playoff drivers.
A crash Sunday on Lap 73 — the second consecutive year he has crashed at Texas — was a strange occurrence. Busch felt something was not right with his right front tire but also was able to turn lap speeds as fast as the leaders. He just needed to nurse the car another six laps or so to get to the end of the stage and he could pit under caution.
He never got there and now sits 17 points below the current playoff cutoff with two typically more unpredictable races — Talladega Superspeedway and the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course — remaining in the round.
Was it the beginning of the end of the playoff run for a driver considered one of the most talented on the circuit? Busch won Cup titles in 2015 and 2019 and now appears on the brink of being eliminated in the first or second round for the third time in the past four years.
“This is the time of the year to perform and put up results, and I’m a complete letdown to my team right now not being able to get the results that we need,” Busch said. “Every time I try, I crash. It’s like the less I try, the more I ride around, the better day we have.”
Busch said he didn’t know Sunday what to do as his team encouraged him to stay on the track unless he really felt he needed to pit. A driver hates to crash out but track position is so important that a driver more than likely will hope that they can at least find a way to make it to a caution flag — without being the reason for the caution flag.
“We came off the pit road with new tires after the green-flag cycle and everything was really good — and then we had those couple of restarts. I restarted on the top on that last one, and I felt like I had a flat right front,” Busch said.
“I was going to come pit and I second-guessed it because I was like, ‘Man, you know what, it just doesn’t feel like a flat right front.’ Like just debris was on it, but it was shaking and vibrating. I just went back to the bottom of the racetrack to mind my own business on the bottom, and then it just swapped ends with the back of the car.”
Kyle Busch on how his early crash at Texas Motor Speedway transpired
Just how flabbergasted was Busch? He had a hard time explaining what he was feeling.
“I have no idea,” Busch said. “I’m just at a loss for words. I don’t get it. I hate it for all my guys. … The car was fast. I felt like it was going to be a good top-5, top-10 car for sure and nothing to show for it.”
In his first year at Richard Childress Racing, Busch didn’t truly know what to expect this season. He went from a Joe Gibbs Racing organization used to regularly winning titles to an RCR organization that hasn’t won a Cup crown since 1994.
At the start of the year, most people would probably consider making it to the second round of the playoffs as a respectable season in his first year at RCR.
“As a JGR or a [Hendrick] guy, you’re expected to transfer through — make it through and be in contention for the final four spots,” Busch said the day before the Texas race. “And so, probably where I’m at, I think the Round of 16, a lot of people had us out. And so the Round of 12, I’m sure there’s going to be a lot more that will probably have us out.”
Kyle Busch on how he feels like he let his team down at Texas
His former teammate, Denny Hamlin, had little doubt entering the round that Busch could remain a threat in the playoffs.
“I still know that he’s great and he can carry the equipment a fair amount,” Hamlin said. “That’s assuming the equipment is not 100 percent, which I think it probably is. I don’t look at him any differently. It’s kind of the ebbs and flows of who is running good right now.”
Busch isn’t. He has six finishes of 20th or worse in the past 11 races — which followed a stretch of seven consecutive top-10 finishes. In the playoffs, he has recorded finishes of 11th, seventh, 20th and 34th — and has only scored stage points in one of the eight stages.
If there is any reason to be optimistic, maybe it is that Busch won at Talladega in April. Then again, he is the one saying he needed some luck (as one typically does) to win there.
How does he feel about getting that kind of luck in two consecutive Talladega races?
“Not very good,” Busch said. “But we’re going to go there and fight as hard as we can and run hard. RCR has had a strong [Talladega and Daytona] program, so that’s all we can do.”
Thinking Out Loud
There is talk on whether Texas Motor Speedway will move its Cup playoff weekend to the spring as a regular-season race. That certainly might be a good move if it can bring cooler temperatures (and also not battle football season in an area that loves, loves, loves its football).
The temperatures reached 100 degrees Sunday. It wasn’t a great day to be outside.
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The Dallas-Fort Worth market is one where NASCAR needs to race as it is a big market and a diverse one as well. Finding the right date is imperative. So taking a look at a spring event to see if that is the best place for its one race (the track used to have two races) certainly seems prudent to try.
In The News
–NASCAR and team principles met Tuesday to resume negotiations on a new charter deal. The current charter agreement ends after the 2024 season. Team owner Rick Hendrick said: “I think charters are going to be there. All indications are they will be there. We’re getting close.”
–The Cup Series heads to Talladega Superspeedway this week and NASCAR isn’t changing any specifications to the roof hatch after Ryan Preece‘s wild wreck at Daytona, where there was some deformation of the hatch that also could have been a product of damage to other parts of the roof. NASCAR did mandate a few weeks ago a specific window net mechanism to be used after what it saw from Preece’s window net not staying secure.
—Matt DiBenedetto was released from Rackley W.A.R. truck series team with three races remaining in the season. He already was set to part ways at the end of the year. No replacement for this weekend at Talladega has been named.
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Stat of the Day
Sunday’s victory at Texas was William Byron‘s 10th of his Cup career but first in the playoffs.
They Said It
“I know what I did. And I choked.” —Bubba Wallace on the final restart at Texas in which he surrendered the lead for good
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass, and sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass.
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