Birthday Boy Kyle Busch wins at Kansas Speedway
Busch picks up his first win of the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series Season
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (May 2, 2021) – Kyle Busch held off the field on a late race restart to win Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway. Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Martin Truex Jr. finished sixth in the 400-mile event. Busch also claimed the win in yesterday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Kansas Speedway giving Toyota the sweep of the race weekend.
Toyota Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Cup Series (NCS)
Kansas Speedway
Race 11 of 36 – 400.5 miles, 267 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, KYLE BUSCH
2nd, Kevin Harvick*
3rd, Brad Keselowski*
4th, Matt DiBenedetto*
5th, Chase Elliott*
6th, MARTIN TRUEX JR.
12th, DENNY HAMLIN
26th, BUBBA WALLACE
28th, CHRISTOPHER BELL
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M’s Mix Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 1st
What does it mean to get back to victory lane with the ups and downs you’ve faced both personally and professionally in recent months?
“You talk about ups and downs of racing – there’s been a lot of downs of life for us. I have a great opportunity and a great job, no doubt. But struggling with the infertility and stuff like that with Samantha (Busch, wife). Hey to Samantha and Brexton (son) back home. Hopefully he won, I don’t know what the results are from Brexton’s race today. Just a great day to be able to put this M&M’s Mix Camry up front. Want to thank Hy-Vee, our retail partner. They did a huge promotion for us this year with M&M’s and Rowdy Energy. It’s cool to get everybody back to victory lane again this early in the season. To be able to get some of those points going our way now and hopefully – heck, I just remembered, the Buschy McBusch race. The Busch won it, what do you know, right on.”
How do you remain focused when you’re dealing with struggles outside of the race car?
“It’s hard sometimes. When you go through the lows, you go through the disappointment, you go through the dejection and the non-understanding of just whether or not you can still do it. There’s a sense of doubt there for sure. You just have to keep persevering, keep digging and putting your focus forward to be able to come out here and win this thing. Thanks to all the fans here at Kansas Speedway, it’s awesome to have people back and you guys coming out and supporting us for what we can do with the rules right now. Thanks to my team, everybody at Toyota, TRD – the M&M’s Camry was awesome today. Ben Beshore, it’s his first win as a crew chief. Happy for him, happy for my guys – let’s celebrate.”
What does it mean to get back to victory lane?
“It’s awesome. Just such a testament to this team and everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing. Ben Beshore, his first win as a Cup crew chief. It’s awesome to put M&M’s back in victory lane – M&M’s Mix on board with us here this weekend. Super thanks to our vendor partner, Hy-Vee, they did a cool promotion with Rowdy Energy and M&M’s a couple weeks ago. Great things going all around. It’s cool to come back to Kansas, it’s great to get back to victory lane. I have to thank my teammate, (Martin) Truex Jr. I forgot to mention it on television, but I just saw the replay and he was behind me, pushing me and gave me one hell of a run down the frontstretch to get me clear. That was the winning ticket for us.”
What is the key to getting the upper hand on the restarts?
“I don’t know that you really know. You don’t know who’s going to pick behind you. You can guess, but you don’t really know. A couple of the times that I guessed, I guessed right. A couple times I guessed, I guessed wrong. It’s just a matter of what’s going to happen behind you. I felt like if I could get Truex behind me, that would be the best thing for us. Being a teammate, he would help push and I’d tell him when we’re going to get the best run we could and it all worked.”
What does it mean to get a win this early in the season?
“What’s really cool is that we started the race good and we worked our way forward from the start of the race. We made minor adjustments all day to the car and nothing really did anything. We kept getting tighter as the day went on, even though we were trying to free up. We did a long sim session this week, that was helpful. I feel like we’re really close for Kansas at least and what we can do and what we can learn on that. I look forward to hopefully being able to celebrate with my team and hopefully have a good night tonight. It’s cool to be able to work the way we did today.”
MARTIN TRUEX, JR., No. 19 Auto-Owners Insurance Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 6th
What happened at the end of the race and how was your race overall?
“At the end there, I was second through three and four and came off of four and the 2 (Brad Keselowski) and the 4 (Kevin Harvick) somehow got linked together and went flying past me doing the old bump draft deal. When they got to turn one, the 4 never lifted and turned the 2 sideways right in front of me and I had to stop so I lost two more spots on the last lap because I lost all my momentum. Tough deal there, but overall just a tough day for us. We started there mid-pack with our Auto-Owners Camry and it took a while to get any progress. We struggled with the handling, back and forth between tight and loose all day. Just could never get it all tied together. Never could get it to do what we wanted. It was a real handful in traffic. Scratched and clawed for the best we could get and that was sixth, which is not all that terrible.”
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