Toyota Racing – Kyle Busch
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Indianapolis Motor Speedway – July 21, 2017
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Kyle Busch was made available to the media at Indianapolis Motor Speedway:
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Skittles Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How do you feel about your car this weekend?
“Couldn’t tell you. I don’t even see it until tomorrow. Certainly we’ve been really good here the last couple of years and being able to score the wins in the Brickyard 400 has been extra special. Certainly there’s no other race I’ve won probably that’s been any bigger than the Brickyard 400. You know, it’s really cool to be able to come here every August and late July, August and have the opportunity to race around the Brickyard and with the amount of heritage and prestige of racing that’s here, it’s pretty special. But a lot of it’s been IndyCars over the years and certainly NASCAR has their history as well and it’s fun to be able to run – to win back to back – and would certainly love the opportunity to go for three in a row, so the Skittles Camry always looks good and I’ve got my special helmet with me this week to always keep my mouth shut on the radio and making sure that my mouth’s full with some Skittles and ready to rock and roll, so I better get some now.”
Why do you think you’re so good at this difficult track?
“I wouldn’t know what makes me so good here. I just think the last few years we just really have been able to capitalize on what I’ve been feeling in the race car and to be able to work on it and fix it. I feel like that’s probably the biggest thing is just there’s times when you’re at race tracks and you’re working on your car, working on your car, working on your car and it just seems to be doing the same thing over again. You just can’t find the niche that will fix it and I think that Adam (Stevens, crew chief) and myself, we were able to find that here a couple years ago and we’ve been able to answer all of our questions, so that’s certainly been the biggest thing, so I think we’re now coming here for three years in a row, three different aero packages with the Cup car and so it’s certainly going to be interested what transpires this year. But one of the most difficult paces about the race here at Indy is just the ability to pass and getting runs on guys and being able to make that move whether it’s off the corner of [Turns] 1, 2 3 or 4. You’ve just got to kind of pick and choose how you can get to a guy and make that moves and not get too tight, you know? There’s a balance of being able to turn through the corners here – they’re really, really flat – and still being able to accelerate with the horsepower we have out of the turns and down these long straightaways.”
Can you tell whether the XFINITY Series package is getting better from the first practice?
“So far, no. I haven’t really seen too much out of it yet. I’ve only been in a group of about three or four cars, you know, so it will be interesting to see wat happens on restarts and bigger groups of cars and seeing how much we can keep that group of cars together. It kind of seemed like whenever we would get you know, five or six of us, somebody would want to shuffle to the back and then somebody would pull off, so there wasn’t a big enough group for me to focus on all that yet.”
Do you come to Indianapolis Motor Speedway reflecting on how you’ve won the last two here or this was your last win?
“Yes. Seriously, yeah. I mean, it’s pretty cool to come in here thinking that we have a chance to go for three in a row and, you know, it’s ultimately frustrating in the same breath that, you know, it’s been 365 days since we’ve won one of these things. It’s certainly hasn’t been from lack of effort or fast race cars – thanks to everybody at TRD (Toyota Racing Development) and Joe Gibbs Racing – and our Toyota’s been good. It’s just every single week it just seems to be something else that kind of bites us, you know? It’s not the same thing over and over again that we’ve got to fix, so it’s just little things here or there that keep kind of working against us, but there are two other cars that we’ve – that have been fast – the 78 (Martin Truex Jr.) and the 42 (Kyle Larson) have been really, really good. I feel like we’ve been right there with them, but maybe a tick behind. Maybe we’ve been the third-best car every single week, so we haven’t been the guy – not every week. You know, Phoenix obviously it was ours to win there. Richmond, I felt like we had a chance to win. Charlotte, we passed the 78 for the win is what I thought, but some other races just haven’t quite gone as good.”
Will the 2018 September race date for this market draw more fans?
“I don’t know that it’s necessarily going to be a whole lot different. Certainly, I think it’s a big race. It’s a prestigious race, so maybe having as the finale of our regular season will give it a little bit more allure to the fans, but other than that obviously it’s dang hot here in July, August in order to come out here and ask the race fan to sit in the grandstands for four-plus hours, you know? So thankfully some of them are covered obviously, but past that, you know, maybe late September would be a little bit better and we may see that the race as enjoy the scenery here around that time of year and will come back.”
Do you feel like this year is the opposite of last with Joe Gibbs Racing is fighting for playoff spots?
“Man, again, I wouldn’t say we’ve struggled. We’ve led plenty of laps this year. We’ve been in plenty of positions to win. We don’t have the win numbers to show for that, but as far as it goes, I mean I’d like to say that the answer is yes – that we’re just not showing all of our cards or the luck bank isn’t showing us all of our luck yet, you know? I don’t know what it is, but if that’s what the swing is going to be is that they’re going to punish you in the beginning part of the year or you can win races there in order to reward you at the end to the year, I would certainly take that. We just have to see how it plays out.”
Do you pay attention to history in other racing series and here at Indy?
“Yeah, he said it – I didn’t say it – so I didn’t necessarily know that Michael Schumacher had won three in a row here, but obviously I know that from being in the NASCAR ranks that Jeff Gordon is the winningest driver here being able to win five Brickyard 400s, right? So I keep that in my mind, but would certainly like to think that I’m good enough, my team is good enough, Toyota, Joe Gibbs Racing, all of us we can go out there and score another win here and make it three in a row and do something that’s been unprecedented in the NASCAR ranks here. I do enjoy watching all forms of racing whether it’s NASCAR, IndyCar or Formula 1, I do pay attention a little bit, so certainly have my eye on it as much as I can.”
Do you expect the rules changes to make for a dramatically different of subtly different XFINITY Series race?
“As of what I’m seeing right now, it will be subtly different and I don’t see it being dramatically different at the current moment.”
What did you notice that was most different in the XFINITY Series practice?
“Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I noticed for sure was the horsepower – the motor – just the lack thereof, you know? You can pretty much run wide open leaving pit road all the way around to start your run and then just run wide open the whole rest of the time, you know? So to me it’s about trying to not lift as much as you can. You may have to here or there in traffic in order to time a run or something like that, but other than that you can pretty much run wide open. So the lack of horsepower is definitely the biggest that I’ve noticed.”
Do you still plan to step away from the XFINITY Series with 100 wins and how will you fill that time?
“Really nothing came into the thought of it. I guess Joe (Gibbs, team owner) and I we’ve always been joking for the last two or three years they’re going to kick us out and they are. They’re trying year by year and race by race eliminating myself from competition in the XFINTIY Series, so I figured I better hurry up and try to get to a number that I would think that is unreachable to others and if I can do that then obviously that would just kind of be the end of it, but I don’t know that it would be just a hard cut, you know? Like if I win 100 and I still have three races to go, obviously I’d have to fulfil obligations of contracts an everything else, so I wouldn’t do that to my sponsors, but would certainly look at the opportunity to then just help Joe out when I needed to help Joe out if it’s a race or two or whatever in the next couple of years to just verify where the cars and the equipment and team and everything is at then that’s what I’m there to do. And would I fill it with any others? It’s hard with late model races because I race on the weekends, so there’s only so many weekday shows that happen, so I wouldn’t be able to fill more with that and they keep putting more race restrictions on the Truck Series as well, so I’m kind of limited on that as well.”
How close have you been to running the Indy 500?
“I had it done last year – sold and everything ready to go – and I’ve got a boss that said no. Figure it out. I’ve got two bosses – one’s a male and one’s a female. I would certainly. I thought that I had a great opportunity to do it. I’m kind of glad it didn’t come together because of (Fernando) Alonso kind of stole the headlines the last time it was done, but, you know, there may be more in the future guys coming over to run that race, so, you know, I may have to split the limelight if you will with somebody else that kind of wants to do that race, but I think it’d be fun. It’d be a unique opportunity. I think the biggest thing that scares my boss is that I’ve never driven those cars and so I don’t know – you know, a Cup car or a XFINITY car or a Truck or something like that like I know what to feel and how to feel and when something bad starts to happen, I can straighten it out or normally I can try to fix it although that didn’t quite happen one time. So I think that’s probably the biggest fear is just not knowing what those cars do when you get into a bad situation.”
Does being a Toyota NASCAR driver make it easier to find an Indy 500 ride?
“Yeah, it – yes, it would keep your options open a little bit for either side of the engine manufacturer and obviously next year that’s going to change with the aero platform to my understanding with just engines being the culprit and not necessarily being an aero package anymore, so, you know, obviously if Toyota was a third, I would be limited to that, so it does kind of keep your options open.”
Would you trade a NASCAR win at Indy for an Indy 500 win?
“Nah, I’m good. I’d like to be able to just have an opportunity to go out and earn it myself and if that day ever comes then we’ll see what happens.”
What’s being missed as NASCAR talks about cutting back Cup drivers in support series races?
“I don’t know. I don’t think that’s a battle I’ll ever win, so I’m best of keeping my mouth shut.”
How did you meet your wife Samantha here in Indy?
“Yeah, so, 10 years ago today actually I was given rides for Chevrolet – pace car rides and whatnot – for some fans and stuff like that and she (Samantha Busch, wife) was a promotional model for Chevrolet, but she was just kind of checking IDs for people and whatnot and writing some information down and I kind of saw her from a distance and, you know, asked my PR person to go ask her if she would like to a tour around the race track and so she did and she got in the car with me and I took her around and she was like, ‘Oh, man, you’ve got a way better gig than I did.’ Me being driver people around and her not – she didn’t know who I was, so that was 2005, right? 2006 maybe? And, so I wasn’t very well known obviously in the Sprint Cup tour then, so it was just kind of fun and we exchanged numbers there and then I actually didn’t see her again for three months, but we talked on the phone and she – I finally got her talked into coming to another race and she came out to I think it was Texas in the fall, so that was a long time and from there just kind of hit it off and been together ever since. Five or six – it was 10 years ago today, so whatever – well is it seven? Think about it – if you go backwards, ’16, right? That’s one, so figure it out.”
