[media-credit name=”David Yeazell” align=”alignright” width=”222″]
[/media-credit]Kyle Busch and the Bristol Motor Speedway are synonymous. Busch and Victory Lane at Bristol even more so.
But following the two races he competed in this weekend, Busch couldn’t get out of Tennessee quick enough. He raced his own Kyle Busch Motorsports car on Friday night in the Nationwide Series race, and his Joe Gibbs Racing Camry on Saturday. Neither ended the way he wanted or thought it would.
His No. 54 Monster Energy Toyota had the potential to end up in Victory Lane, though short of a few adjustments. Never running lower than the 10th position he had qualified in, Busch ran among the leaders for all of the Food City 250. Yet, with his third place finish Busch never seemed to be a challenger for the win. That going to the car he used to drive to Victory Lane.
“It was a real good night for the Monster Energy Camry. All these guys – they worked hard, they did a good job and we missed a little bit of something [Friday] – kind of like last year,” said Busch after the NNS race, when he expressed most of his disappointment with the new track conditions.
“It seemed like the more we’d go, we would really lose rear traction. That seemed to be our struggle point tonight. Overall, the guys did a good job and can’t say enough about how we ran – we came home third. We’ll that that – we probably shouldn’t have been that good, but I wish we were better.”
The point of Busch’s frustration came not with either of his cars or results. The fact that Bruton Smith, owner of Bristol, had the track surfaced changed after the March race was. The preferred line is now the outside, rending racing and often passing on the inside, obsolete.
Following 250 laps on Friday, Busch said he wasn’t a fan of the new Bristol, and his opinion didn’t change after 500 more laps on Saturday. Even going as far to say that the track was ruined, there wasn’t much racing to go on as everyone fought to get to the outside. Perhaps rightly frustrated, Busch has seen success he’s had the last few years at the bullring instantly vanish as he tries to adapt to a track that he once had control of.
And he’s still searching for his first win in his own car. The one win under their belt in their inaugural NNS season belongs to big brother Kurt. Kyle has suffered some bad luck and bad breaks in his bid for Victory Lane and will only have two more races in the No. 54 in the season’s final 10 events.
“I think they made it worse. The bottom groove now – the top was so much longer around before that you could actually make the bottom do something for you,” he said of Friday’s racing. “Now the top is closer and those guys are making the middle we call it fast and it’s just too hard to make ground on the bottom.
“You really have to pinch it tight up off the corners so you use a lot of steering wheel and you can’t put the power down to exit off the corner and you spin the tires. I’m not a fan.”
Busch stands behind his harsh words for a track that he once loved. Across the three NASCAR national series, he has 12 Bristol wins in 41 races. He has 29 top 10s and has led a combined 2,731 laps. But he didn’t lead a single one this weekend.
“It’s frustrating. It’s certainly not what we all want to see around here,” said Busch about the facility. “I felt like before there was a bottom and there was a way top and you could even use the middle and you could work a lot around through there.
“Right now, they brought the top closer to the bottom so it actually hurts the bottom worse because you don’t have room to move up off the corners and get into the corners and all that stuff. You’re actually to the mercy of the guy on your outside.
“I’m glad they conferred with all the drivers.”
