NASCAR CUP SERIES
DARLINGTON RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY PRESS CONF. TRANSCRIPT
AUGUST 31, 2024
Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 8 Morgan & Morgan Camaro ZL1, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series’ practice and qualifying session at Darlington Raceway.
Media Availability Quotes:
A lot of speed on Richard Childress Racing the last few weeks, really since the Olympic break. What do you attribute that to?
“Just a lot of hard work and everybody really pulling together, and you know, a few changes personnel-wise behind the scenes, but really just, you know, great effort and great work really coming together. A lot of that’s been from April to May timeframe of just conversations of processes and procedures that we need to improve on and work on and we’re starting to see the fruits of that labor now.”
Do you see this weekend as one where you may have to just take chances or do a crazy strategy if you don’t have the flat-out speed?
“Yes and no. I don’t know that you can really get a whole lot done here because of all the fall off and tire wear and things like that. If you have a three-lap run, do you stay out? I don’t predict you’re gonna be able to hold them off very long so unless it’s a green-white-checker which in that case you’re probably gonna get a few as we tend to do this day and age so I don’t know that you’ll be able to see a whole lot of different strategy play. We’ll just have to have some outright raw speed and go get ‘em.”
Does Parker Retzlaff owe you or anybody at your organization either an explanation or an apology for maybe not doing enough in other people’s eyes last week for you?
“Not me, but I don’t really know him all that well so I don’t know what sort of business relationships there are behind the scenes. Once upon a time when I owned a Truck Series team, we had other teams that we helped and we supported and we gave parts and pieces and resources and different things too. I don’t know how all that stems for his relationship with Beard behind the scenes. So yeah, not to me. He didn’t owe me nothing.”
Why not?
“Well, we have our Chevrolet team meetings, our key meetings, key partner meetings before the race and he’s not in one of those. So if you’re not in one of those, then you should not be relied upon as a key partner to need to push and know the game that needs to be played. So that’s how I look at it.”
Flashing forward a little bit to the start of next year going to Bowman Gray for the Clash. Your boss man Richard has a long history there’s where you got his start. What do you think about going to Bowman Gray, such a historic place? Have you ever been over there?
“I have never been no, I’ve never been on the premises. I’ve seen a lot of highlight reels from over there so I will have to call upon a driver coach, probably Burt Myers, to give me some pointers about what to do and what to look out for and how to get around that place. Him and I are pretty close and been friends for a long time. He seems to be a champion over there and knows how to get around there well.”
Obviously you hope to win this weekend and make the playoffs but if you don’t do you feel better about being able to keep your consecutive season streak alive given that you’ve had the speed, you’ve been knocking on the door, do you feel more optimistic about that happening now between now and the end of the season?
“No, I mean, you want to go out there and contend every week, but getting wins is a whole different story. So, for us to be able to capitalize on our good runs, like last week, we just missed and didn’t execute well enough in those final moments to get the job done. Anything can happen. You’ve got to live it out until the end and we’ve got 11 more weeks to get it done. It would certainly be nice to get it done here in Darlington and put that story to rest but also put ourselves in the playoffs and have a shot to continue to build on this momentum that we’ve had with RCR and our stuff getting better to take our Chevrolets far into the playoffs.”
You haven’t been in this position on the outside of the playoffs at this point very often in your career. Has there been any frustration? How have you kind of kept your mindset moving forward to take advantage of every chance that you can?
“Yeah, the whole season’s been frustrating. Every week, it just kind of seems like, okay, what’s next? But that’s something that we can’t change. Chris Buescher just said it beforehand, you know, there’s a lot of things and a lot of questions that we have for ourselves and answers that we might not be able to answer exactly right now as to how our year has gone, but that’s in the past, and you know you can use that as a distraction or a motivation tool, and we’ll look to try to make that as a motivation tool. We did not run well here in the past. This race in the spring we did not run well, but we don’t come in this weekend holding our heads low and thinking that we’re gonna not run well again. We put our heads to paper and try to figure out why and said we’re gonna go there with the best piece we can and try to kick their butt and get a win.”
Looking at the recent talk with Kyle Larson and Max Verstappen, what’s your take on would it be harder for a good NASCAR driver to go to F1 and do well or harder for a good F1 driver to come here and do well?
“There once was a time when Lewis Hamilton and Kyle Busch were the dominant guys and this conversation never happened so I’m jealous, frankly. But maybe it didn’t happen because I didn’t bring on the conversation myself. I would say that you have seen guys do better going from our realm to the other one. I don’t know if it’s a pure downforce thing or not, but those guys seem to just drive pure beyond the limits of the car and the car will take it and they can stick. Over here you have to have a lot more finesse and so you just kind of see guys not understand the finesse part and where the grip is without just going over it. To answer your question in short, I would say Kyle’s probably got a better shot than Max.”
You just said that last Saturday you didn’t execute well at the end of the race. What could you have done differently?
“Nothing. That’s the terrible part about restrictor plate racing. The two guys behind me seemed to be a bit out of control and when you go back and look at SMT data they were dilly-dallying around off of turn two, getting squirrely and not holding their steering wheel straight, not holding their gas pedal down and they were slow. The guy that was on the outside with the run with Harrison and Parker, they were wide open, steering wheel straight and they drove right by us. So, I guess I was blamed for not pulling up in front of the 21 off of two, but the runs were equal when I was watching and re-watching, when I was watching in my mirror and remembering it as it happened. The 20 was getting to me as fast as the 21 was getting to me and when the 20 was bumping me, that’s when the momentum of the outside with the 21 and the 62 took off. If I would have turned to get in front of that, I would have wrecked. There’s no way in protecting that. So unless I come off a turn two and just go to the middle and block the 21’s lane, then who’s to say that we don’t get squirrely and the 20 goes right by us on the inside. Monday morning quarterbacking is the worst thing you can do. So it is what it is.”
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