Toyota Racing – Kyle Busch
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Dover International Speedway – October 5, 2018
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Kyle Busch was made available to the media at Dover International Speedway:
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Interstate Batteries Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How much better is the pole than where you think you’d qualify?
“Probably six or eight spots, I believe. It definitely bodes well for us and our Interstate Batteries Camry. I thought we had a decent car in practice. The way it felt, it felt good. It didn’t show the speeds on the speed charts. As the practice went on and guys were making their second and thirds of runs, they were coming back to us in lap times. Our car was really consistent over the runs and we were running the same lap times. Other guys started really fast and they were coming to us a little bit. Hard to tell. Certainly better for us to not have to go out there and bust a fast lap. Speeds were way high here this morning. With the cooler temperatures, it seemed like it was going to be way fast. Excited to have the number one spot going into Sunday. Great opportunity to start the Round of 12 and get rocking.”
Does it matter where you start in this race?
“Yeah, this track is one of the more challenging tracks to pass on as of late. The last couple of years it’s been troublesome. I am not sure why. Last fall was a good race. You could move around, run low, run middle, run high. The rubber did move around the race track. This spring was tough on the bottom. It didn’t matter what you did, everyone was stuck on the bottom. Hopefully this time around, it will move around a little bit and guys will have opportunities to race. If it doesn’t, it bodes better for us because we’re able to start up front.”
What are your thoughts on the race package earlier this week?
“It’s going to be interesting to see what all happens. What R&D and development work goes into that. We saw a taste of it at the All-Star race. We kind of saw everyone bunched together. There was a struggle at the end of the race where guys were able to pass the leader once the leader was out there. That was just one instance. I think there’s certain race tracks it will bode really well at and it will be a positive. There’s probably some others where it might not be that way. We’ll have to give it a wait and see mentality, and find out as we go.”
Have you changed your mentality with the package?
“Sure. We don’t want to see the cars go slower as race car drivers. That is not what we all want to sign up for. But in the instance of going out there and wanting to put out a better show, we’re all for that. And trying to do what’s best for the industry, and collaborating together.”
What’s the process of what you and Sam (Busch) are about to go through together?
“Samantha and I announced earlier this week we’re in the process of going through the second cycle of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization to try to conceive for our second child. Shooting for a girl – we get to pick. It’s fun, I guess. In the grand scheme of things of the way things are naturally done, you don’t get to pick. With all that being said, we’re very excited and we started the second chapter of that. We’re going through the shots and stuff now. She has to go through nightly shots as we go. There are other different drugs she has to take as the progression goes. If I understand it correctly, we’ll go through embryo implementation in early November. Right around then is when that will happen. Hopefully that gets going and everything goes smooth. If everything goes smoothly, there is a lot of good to talk about. But if there is something negative that comes out of that, there’s going to be a lot of emotion around it. That’s why the first cycle we did – everything was positive. It went good. It was easy to talk about. This is why we’re starting early this time because there’s a lot of people we’ve had discussions with over the years that go through this and don’t necessarily get that happy outcome.”
