TOYOTA NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS)
Kyle Busch — Notes & Quotes
Texas Motor Speedway – November 1, 2013
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Snickers Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Are you excited to return to Texas after the success in the spring?
“It certainly went well for us here earlier this year and we made it a lot of fun. Looking forward to being able to do that here again and try to have a repeat performance of those successful races. We’ll see how it goes — obviously a lot can happen throughout the weekend. It all starts right here, unloading off the truck and having a fast race car. Looking forward to getting back behind the wheel of the Snickers Camry and also the Monster Energy Camry in the Nationwide Series and my Toyota Care truck. It’s Texas — we’ll see how it goes.”
Have you peeked at the points following Martinsville?
“I won’t lie — yeah, I peeked at it. I don’t know. It’s a little disappointing the way we ran at Martinsville. We certainly didn’t hope for that obviously. We have run well there in the past and I think that’s the first time I finished out of the top- five in a few times of going there. That was frustrating for us and we tried something new, tried something different and it just didn’t quite work for us. Once we kind of got cycled back on strategy, I couldn’t make it to the front far enough to be able to run by myself. I kept getting boxed in behind a couple guys and would ruin my tires basically just running too hard. Had a bad weekend there and lost a lot of points that we made back up. It’s certainly going to be a lot tougher now than what it had been and obviously we’re going to have to have some luck on our side and the other guys aren’t going to be able to have luck on their side. If you have bad luck with the front two then that’s going to bring five guys back into it I feel like. It’s going to be an even tighter race. That’s what the fans want to see, probably the media wants to see and what I want to see, but I bet you the front two don’t.”
How is running all three series at Texas beneficial?
“You get more track time. The trucks are so different and we run under the lights with the trucks — just getting accustomed to the race track and feeling the way the vehicles react to the rubber being laid down. Last night was pretty interesting — normally in truck practice it never lays down that much rubber, but there was a lot of rubber that got laid down and changed the characteristics of the vehicles a lot. I expect a lot of that here today, too with as many cars are here and as many laps are going to be run putting rubber down on the race track. It’s going to change quite a bit. We’ll see how it goes. Hopefully, we’ve got the right setup that we need for a successful weekend.”
Can the success from the spring Texas race weekend help you through tougher weekends?
“It can. We certainly know we can do it. We’ve done it here before and just this spring was pretty awesome to be able to get it done because it was the first race with the Gen-6 car here and of course I’ve had many successful days in the Nationwide Series here. Just like to continue on that and keep that going. I feel like we’ve run really well this year. We’ve been fast, we’ve been consistent, we’ve done a good job. I screwed up big time at Kansas and we didn’t quite get the car the way we needed to for Martinsville and we suffered there a little bit. You get two bad races and you’re done. You don’t have that option here anymore in the Chase for as much as those guys up front are running well. You can’t have any of those. We’ve got to be on top of our game and come out here and the best we can do is lead all the laps and win all the races in these final three and see where the points stack up. If we do that and we still don’t win it, we did our job. If we don’t do that then essentially we didn’t do our job. We still got to be able to run the best that we can and try to make up ground and see where it all lies.”
Has this been a better Chase for you?
“It certainly has. It’s beneficial. Last year we ran really well in the Chase, but we weren’t a Chase car. That was frustrating. We knew we could do it — we proved to ourselves we could do it and we come out here this year and we were able to follow- up on last year’s success. Barring Kansas, I think we’ve done a really nice job and the way, knock on wood, there wasn’t a big one at Talladega that didn’t get any championship contenders really, but that’s where you try to make up ground when you can is some of those guys have a bad day and you don’t, that’s when you make up big ground and nobody really did anything it was just a little bit of swap here and there. Other than that, we’ve run a lot better this year than in years past, that’s for certain. Apparently there’s still a lot more room for improvement.”
What do you think of the battle between Matt Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson?
“It’s awesome to see. Certainly, it’s pretty impressive because they both are running top-five every single week and they’re running around each other every single week. It’s a dog fight for sure. It’s interesting to watch and see because you look for one of them to feel the pressure and stumble a little bit, but so far they haven’t. You come to places like Texas, Phoenix and Homestead — I think two of the five guys you look at winning those races are the two top guys that are going for the points championship right now. It’s ‘mano-y-mano’ here for the next three.”
How did the new car react at the Homestead-Miami Speedway at last week’s test session?
“Everything was really, really close to last year’s stuff — very similar. The track seems to have aged a little more and maybe the tire compound could use a little bit of help to be better there just because we’ve run the same one I think now three or four years. The tire compound is fine, it’s not that big of a deal. Definitely a lot of grip for the first few laps and then it really tapers off and then everybody is running up next to the fence. I think that’s what we saw years past. As it did get darker, the track seemed to widen out. It’s just during the day when it’s hot out and its slick out that the best you can do is run right next to the wall. As the nighttime came, you could start moving around a little bit more. It’s definitely still a racey joint, but track temperatures are very conducive to that.”
How close do Dave Rogers and Jason Ratcliff work together?
“Dave (Rogers, crew chief) and Jason (Ratcliff, No. 20 crew chief) are probably, in my opinion, they are one of the two closest crew chiefs in the garage area just from the resources that they’ve had and the time that they’ve spent working with each other in the Nationwide Series. They were at JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) Nationwide since I want to say ’06 or something like that. They turned that program from not really winning many races to winning races and winning a ton of races. Those two together, they’ve worked a lot over the years and sharing notes and communicating and having offices right next to each other. Dave made the jump over first to the Cup side and obviously Jason followed a couple years later. I don’t think any of that communication has ever died down. They’re still fierce workers. They work each other competitively because each try to burn as much midnight oil as they can. They’re really smart and do work together quite often.”
Was the original plan to run this weekend’s Truck race or is it just for the Owner’s championship?
“It was the original plan. We haven’t changed our plan at all yet this year. I enjoy running all three and I do run all three typically any chance that the schedule permits. This year we’ve been back to sort of normal I’d say — you run 10 or 12 Truck races and you run about 25 Nationwide races and of course the Cup schedule and that seems to be the norm for me. It’s good to be back in all three and good to be starting the truck here in Texas tonight, hopefully we’ve got a good one and we can finish better than the 88 (Matt Crafton) bunch and try to gain on them a little more here this weekend and Phoenix and Homestead and see if we can’t win the owner’s championship in both Truck and Nationwide and see if we can’t continue to close on the Cup stuff too.”
