TOYOTA NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS)
Kyle Busch — Notes & Quotes
Bristol Motor Speedway – March 14, 2014
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Skittles Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Why are you so strong at Bristol?
“It’s been a real good place for me in years past — not quite as good the last couple years and we would certainly like to change that around a little bit and get back to our old winning ways here with our Skittles Camry. Put the rainbow in victory lane. We’ll see how things go, obviously Nationwide is here too and always look forward to that stuff. Looking forward to what the race is going to have in store for us here Sunday and if anything has changed from last year, which I doubt, then we’ll all be running up top and trying to figure out the new, old, old, new Bristol.”
Were the new aero rules the cause of the up and down performance for Joe Gibbs Racing at Las Vegas?
“I don’t think it’s anything to do with the aero rules, I think it’s just to do with the new ride height rules. The box used to be so big and now it’s way bigger. It just allows more opportunity for teams to experiment and to come up with different things that make their cars go fast. I don’t discount the time and effort and everything that my guys put in at the race shop and everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing and all the work that they do, but there’s teams out there right now that have worked a little smarter than us and figured it out a little earlier than us, but if now is the time to struggle a little bit it’s certainly earlier in the season is an okay time to do that. You do need to pick business up by at least week 10 or so and get yourself rolling.”
Is it a lot harder to pass at Bristol with the new configuration?
“I think it is harder. You run into the corner and you try to move a guy out of the way and when you hit him there’s really not room for him to slide up and you’re already going left, you can’t just turn farther left. If we could then we would all be running around here faster. Essentially when you run the bottom, you could go in the corner and hit a guy, he would move out of the way and you would roll on through. You can’t roll in the corner, hit a guy, cut underneath him and pass him. There’s a whole different way of how you have to race now. That’s why it’s sort of single file around the top, there’s more slide jobs and things going on like that. It’s certainly more challenging or a bigger challenge than what it used to be and it’s just a different form of racing than what it used to be. It’s something we’ve all become accustomed to here the last few times especially that the top is the way to go because when they ground the top they tried to ruin the top and they actually helped it more than the bottom because they smoothed it out and once you get rubber developed up there and once you get the rubber laid down up there, it’s actually faster than the bottom. You can pick up two-tenths of a second like that. They accomplished their goal of single file, they just did it at the wrong spectrum bottom versus top.”
What is your motivation to race in the Nationwide Series?
“I think the biggest thing is sponsorship dollars. Obviously, Monster Energy pays a lot of money for me to drive their car in the Nationwide Series and I went to them a few years ago when Z-Line was kind of going away and NOS was kind of going away — they weren’t going to do as much in the sport. We went to Monster and asked them what they wanted to do and they said they’d be interested in a full Nationwide deal so we took it, we did it and that’s why I run Nationwide. If I didn’t have those guys, then I’m not so sure that they would feel confident being in the sport whatsoever. At least it’s another team that’s out there that’s running around and is in business. It’s not necessarily just for me, but there’s 16 or 17 guys on that team with the 54 car that have jobs because of that sponsor. That’s sort of the main reason. I guess if there wasn’t a sponsor for me to race Nationwide then I would be like Carl Edwards, I wouldn’t do it anymore. I don’t think that he doesn’t want to do it, I think he would if he could. I just don’t think that Roush has the money to have a Nationwide car for him when they’re short on other cars.”
What does it mean to be close to reaching 10,000 laps led in NSCS?
“It’s pretty neat you know anytime we’re able to set records, break records, math — however you want to say it. It’s always fun. It just means you’re accomplishing things in the sport, various things in the sport. There’s a lot of things that I want to accomplish still that I haven’t. Whatever things come along that way that we’re able to accomplish is awesome, it’s fun, it’s great — it means you are a namesake in the sport and that hopefully things continue to go down that path. Whether it stops at 10,000 or not, I doubt it will so hopefully we just keep going.”
Do you expect the intensity to pick up as the Chase gets closer?
“I think you’re going to see it pick up for sure and I would especially expect it to pick up also if there are guys that are leading races that have wins and guys that are running second that don’t have wins to get themselves in the Chase. I think you’re going to see some things happening so it’s going to be interesting how all that plays out. It’s a part of what this sport is, it’s what the rules grant it now and everybody is playing by the same ones, but some might play a little harder than others.”
