“I did win the race today, by the way, so that might be a story. But I’m sure it’s not.”
While Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin and Tony Stewart stole the headlines, lost in it all was the fact that ‘Rowdy’ Busch was able to steal the victory.
“Unfortunately it got a little dirty there at the end, and it was just running — those guys were running each other really, really hard, especially down the straightaways, just side drafting one another and slowing each other down,” Busch commented after the race. “That was the easiest time for me to gain time, just being able for me to run my own race right there and to run around the top. I finally got my momentum going and got a little bit of the tight that was in the car out of it, and we ran those guys down, and then was able to pass them there in 3 and 4 before the big wreck ensued.”
While Kyle Busch may win a lot, this was in fact the first win for Toyota and Joe Gibbs Racing at Auto Club Speedway.
Not every day do you accomplish something that big that hasn’t been done before. If it was any other given weekend with Busch winning in the style he did, well, this would’ve been one of your headline stories.
“To get TRD and Toyota in victory lane here in California, of course that’s great, too,” Busch continued. “It’s their home. They’re not from too far from here. And for Dave and I. We’ve been working really hard, and everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing has been working really hard. But to finally seal the deal here today feels good.”
The battle that Logano and Hamlin put on is one that Busch has seen himself in a lot of times as he is known to be one of the hardest racers out there, and sometimes be dirty at what he does. One of his most recent hard battles was last week’s Nationwide Series race in the final laps with Kyle Larson, where they bumped fenders in the process.
It is no secret that Busch has caused his fair share of wrecks and made certain people mad. In Busch’s eyes, he called it just “hard racing” between the pair.
“It looked like there through three and four that Joey went to the bottom but didn’t quite get all the way down there and knew that Denny was going to have the run on the outside and slid up a little bit,” Busch commented. “I’m not sure if he lost his front end or not, but they got together a little bit, and then it turned Denny sideways and then somehow Joey got into the fence, too. But that’s just from the minimal replays I’ve seen.”
In comparison, Busch says clean racing is “when you’re just running each other hard and you’re separated down the straightaways, you’re trying not to slow each other down and bring the third car back there into the fray.”
While it marks a big win for TRD and Joe Gibbs Racing, it also marks a big win for Busch and crew chief Dave Rogers in respect to confidence. Busch admitted that missing the Chase barely last year put a lot of weight on both his and Rogers’ shoulders on whether they could actually come back this year and do well.
Looking at his season to date, Busch feels they’ve done well as at Daytona they were running well before the motor problem while he messed up at Phoenix.
“Then we go to Vegas and run up front, we lead some laps, we just didn’t have a good long run car,” Busch said. He finished fourth there. “Then last week at Bristol we had a good car, we sped on pit road and got back in traffic, never really made our way back up to the front on good tires, and then here this weekend, again, we had the best car, we led the most laps, and felt like it was our race to win, but in reality it was our race to lose when all those guys kept pitting behind us and putting on tires. We felt like track position was the best for us, although tires were worth a lot of speed.”
However, Busch notes that finally, unlike last year, they had some luck on their side and were able to pull off the win. Busch also says it shows their hard work has paid off after their conversation a couple weeks ago.
“Dave and I talked a lot in the last few weeks about what we can do to try to help each other and put our program on the map where we’re a bigger force to be reckoned with,” he said.
Another thing that has benefited Busch this year is the success he has had on the Nationwide Series side, winning last week at Bristol and this week at California. He says the extra seat time in those cars has helped their Cup program.
“Being able to get that feel of what the racetrack transitions like and what the car does throughout the run and everything and where you have to move around to,” he explained. “You know, I did a lot of things today similar to what I did yesterday, but people can say, oh, well, it’s just as easy to watch the race on TV and watch what the winner does. But I don’t really want to sit there for three hours and watch it, I’d rather be out there feeling everything and participating in it, and of course it’s always cool when you can win both races.”
