Toyota Racing – Kyle Busch
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes

BRISTOL, Tenn. (March 24, 2021) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Kyle Busch was made available to media via videoconference prior to the Bristol event today:

KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M’s Messages Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing

What do you think about Ty Gibbs?

“I think Ty is very passionate. His family – ever since he has been alive – he’s known his family in racing, so he’s grown up in racing, just being around a race team and what Joe (Gibbs) has always done, having Coy (Gibbs) now a bigger part of the organization. It’s been really cool to see him grow up, get to know him. I remember Jackson (Gibbs), which is the oldest one of J.D.’s sons, I remember him coming to the racetrack at nine, 10 or 11 years old, something like that, and sitting with Samantha (Busch) on the pit box. I guess I’ve been around a long time with these kids, and it’s neat to see them grow up and having the passion for the sport that they still do, especially with Ty and Ty wanting to be involved in racing. He’s been a huge part of the iRacing stuff and helping me get into the iRacing thing last year and now seeing him full-fledged in ARCA and having the success that he’s had there, and of course having early, great success in the Xfinity Series. I think it’s just been amazing to watch. He’s grown up in the short tracks, he’s grown up on the go-karts that Brexton (Busch) is doing. It’s been fun to see him grow up the ranks to where he’s at today, still having that same type of success.”

What is your outlook on Bristol?

“For me, I’m not a dirt guy. I didn’t grow up like Kyle Larson. Kyle Larson is known as a dirt guy, but I did race dirt when I was a kid. I raced Legend cars, modifieds, all on dirt, and then pavement ever since. I did run the super late models on dirt with the Prelude races that Tony (Stewart) had years ago. I was able to finish first, second, third in a few of those, so it was pretty fun. Those cars are made for dirt. Every time people ask, why won’t you race a truck– these things are just so heavy, and the tire is not at all indictive to producing grip. It seems like it’s a full-fledged ice rink, like literally, you are just out there on ice, trying to make your way around the track. That’s why I’ve never given much participation to it, but obviously now, I have no choice. It’s in the Cup Series, so we will go out there and give it everything we’ve got and see what we can do. Our team has really relied heavily on Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) as to what we’ve done with the trucks and the Truck Series with the success that we’ve had. We’ve won with Bubba Wallace. We’ve won with Christopher Bell. We could have won another one with Christopher, I feel like, but we had some things happen in that race. It’s just going to be a learning experience for sure. These vehicles are nothing like I’ve driven on dirt, probably, so it’s going to be interesting.”

What is the importance of the heat races and the practices?

“I don’t know. I don’t really know what to expect. The biggest thing is just what the track is going to be, what state is the track going to be in. They talk about heavy, and in our team meeting yesterday, I was talking about heavy, and Christopher Bell looked at me and was like what are you talking about. The dirt race we had the other night, it was never heavy. He’s talking about mud getting plastered to your visor and you having to do tear-offs every straightaway, but the heaviest it was when we ran the other night was just little specks kind of hitting you on the visor. You can’t really have that with our cars, because you are just going to get mud on the windshields and then you are not going to be able to see. You don’t have the opportunity to pull visors, so it’s going to have to be more dry slick, more slippery through much of the event and you are just going to have to be ready for whatever conditions come on the track, knowing those conditions are always going to change. I don’t know if it’s really going to be much car and setup and stuff like that involved, as much as it’s just going to be the race car driver and trying to figure out what lines your car works best in and making the most of the opportunity.”

Can you talk about your Twitter interaction with Denny Hamlin?

“Fortunately, I got to the meeting literally like 30 seconds before he did, so I shot that picture before he got there, just to make sure I had ammunition to call him out, and as soon as I was done taking the photo, he walked in the door. I made sure before the meeting started to blast that out there and get it going. We are just having some fun, digging some points at each other. It’s crazy what people do and say on social media all of the time. They have no representation of what the truth is or anything else. Somebody was talking about how none of our desks face each other, well, the picture was only half of the room. The other half of the room looks the exact same way, so there is half of the room looking at the other half of the room with screens on all four walls. It’s a great dynamic that we have there. We were just poking fun at one another and obviously, he’s helping me out and trying to make Kyle great again.”

Do the drivers with dirt experience have an advantage?

“The dirt guys I would say definitely have an advantage. The more experience you have on dirt, the more trust you have in what the vehicle can do on dirt and what your driving style is or what your driving technique can be and how you can trust the grip level that the dirt has versus what your car has. I think there’s a lot of things that the dirt guys can really pick up on. You always see in those truck races the guys that are good at it, that put some time into it, are better than the ones that are not. I can’t name them all, but (Kyle) Larson, Christopher (Bell), (Tyler) Reddick, even Bubba (Wallace). Bubba never really had any dirt experience, but he did a good job in the Eldora race for us. (Stewart) Friesen, I think he will actually do a really good job. He’s obviously known as a dirt guy. Those guys will shine, and I think that they will be faster during points of the weekend, but I think it’s all going to be circumstantial on how it comes down to the end and what exactly happens towards the finish.”

Did Joe Gibbs Racing lean on Kyle Busch Motorsports with their dirt experience?

“Definitely. We were an open book as far as all the experiences that we have had with Eldora and the races that we’ve run on dirt over there. Setup stuff, I don’t know how much of that can be the same, but definitely some of the pieces and components, and the things that we would do in order to prepare for the dirt race. One of them is as simple as just knowing that you need a Swiffer in your car. The cars build enough dust and dirt and there’s enough static electricity on the windshield, the plexiglass, that it will pick up and keep the dirt on the inside of the windows, so you need something to clean off the windows under yellow, so it’s just little stuff like that, that I think is imperative to your success at the Bristol dirt race.”

Do you feel like you are finally turning things around with the No. 18 team?

“Yes and no. Certainly, I don’t want to get too far ahead of anything, but I will say the guys – Ben (Beshore, crew chief) and Jaik (Halpainy, race engineer) and Seth (Chavka, race engineer) did a great job of working on a good setup for Atlanta. We were fast right at the start of the race. We drove our way up towards the front. We kept clawing all day long, every time we had setbacks too, we’d get back towards the front. It was nice to have that speed in our race car that we could perform like that – to be ourselves and be in a position to have a good run, just trying to make up too much on pit road with us having a new guy on the pit crew, we are kind of a little bit behind on pit stops this year. I was trying to make sure we didn’t lose too many spots, and we sped. I say we, because we are a team, and we win, and we lose as a team. We’re trying to figure all of this out together right now and make sure that we can continue to improve as the year goes along in order to be the best when it matters most.”

What is that pit crew member change?

“Our old front tire changer was injured late last year and through the offseason just never was able to fully recover, so I have a new front changer. Honestly, I’m not even sure of his name. We haven’t met yet with protocols and everything right now, it’s kind of hard to get too close to those guys. We will hope that we can pick it up.”

How do you feel about your program going into Martinsville?

“I look forward getting to Martinsville. Ben (Beshore, crew chief) last year was crew chief for Harrison Burton, and it was the first time the Xfinity cars had been to Martinsville in a long time, so there was no practice, they literally just lined it up and raced at Martinsville, and they were super-fast. Harrison was able to win that race. Ben was with me when we were successful at Martinsville, the years that we won in ’15 and ’17, so I’m looking forward to getting there, and hopefully we have some things in store for us to be fast.”

What are your thoughts on the Noah Gragson/Daniel Hemric incident?

“Noah (Gragson) is a fiery guy. He’s had his personality out there for a long time, and he’s always been a fun, easy going type of guy that likes to have a good time but does focus on his work and tries really hard at his work. I don’t think he’s any different than any other race car driver. They want to win. They want to be their best each and every week. I’m just not sure that he knew the exact situation that was happening on pit road, because certainly my visual coming down pit road is that I focus on my pit sign and that’s where I’m trying to go to get into my pit box. When the 18 (Daniel Hemric) was turning into his pit box, there was another car there. I don’t know if Noah saw the full picture of all of that, and just assumed that the 18 was messing with him. Sometimes you’ve got to take things with a grain of salt, go back and watch the film and talk to a guy, but right then and there in that instance, he backed up, backed up too far, whatever, and made a situation happen out of something that didn’t need to be one. I think that all of us our guilty of that. I’m guilty of that. I’ve probably seen things from inside the race car that weren’t exactly what they looked like on TV, so it’s a matter of growth. He’s been into with it with a few of the drivers out there, fortunately, he and I haven’t had any issues. I think it’s kind of the driver etiquette, driver code. You race those how you expect to get raced, and when that changes, the dynamic between those two drivers changes.”

Do you think this is good for the sport and what would be your advice to Noah Gragson?

“It’s a slippery slope. You certainly want to be careful. There’re ways you can climb your way to the top of that mountain, but if you slip too big, you are going to have an avalanche down. Just be careful in the ways that you do it and what you do. I don’t think he’s done anything wrong per say, it’s just a matter of building that persona and how much of that persona do you build. The biggest thing for me if I were giving advice to Noah (Gragson) is you need to put a little more focus on you, yourself, your team and less on everybody else and go out there and win races. He was super-fast at Homestead, highly impressive with what he was doing there, and he should have won that race, but ultimately, it didn’t happen. There are hundreds of YouTube videos out there of Kyle Busch after a race which he dominated and didn’t win where he’s pissed off afterwards, so I’m guilty of it too. It’s a racing incident. It’s stuff that happens. I’ve grown to understand a little more of that as I’ve gotten older, so I’m sure he will too.”

Are you using what you are getting from the simulator?

“I guess to answer your question, I don’t need to go to the sim any more, because I’ve actually been on the West Coast, so I haven’t been in town to go to the sim the last two week, so there was no pre-Phoenix test prep and there was no pre-Atlanta prep on sim. That’s some interesting points that are out there. I just wasn’t around to be able to do it. We’ve certainly built our notebook so far and we will continue to build our notebook. (Martin) Truex and I looked really close in the first run of the race at Phoenix, where we were handling the same. He hit the wall off of turn two about two laps after I hit the wall off of turn two, so they just came to pit road and made some wholesale adjustments to their car that really made it take off. We made some adjustments to our car this weekend in Atlanta that literally was a half a round out of the right rear during the race and we went from being kind of okay, like a fourth-place car, to a 12th place car with a half a round adjustments. There’s a lot that can happen with those adjustments on pit road, so we are learning that stuff right now. I know Ben (Beshore, crew chief) is learning that stuff. He doesn’t have that experience. Jaik (Halpainy) and Seth (Chavka), my engineers, they’ve been in the Cup Series for a couple years on the 20, so we are all debriefing and talking about each and everything that we do and what magnitude those things feel like to me so that they can help build their knowledge in what we need to do going forward.”

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