After suffering a right lower leg compound fracture and a mid-left foot fracture in this season’s Xfinity Series opener, Kyle Busch was forced to sit out for the first 12 races (almost half of the regular season) of the Sprint Cup Season.
Upon returning, NASCAR granted Busch a waiver, granting him permission to make the Chase as long as he made it like everyone else. He missed so many races that, a wildcard spot was not possible, so Busch must win and finish in the top 30 in points.
Although, half of Busch’s task is done now, as the Joe Gibbs driver took first place at Sonoma on Sunday.
“Yeah, it was a fun race today. I actually had a lot of fun racing out here at Sonoma,” Busch said. “Normally it’s kind of a nightmare for us sometimes and this 18 team, but we had a great day today.”
To make the Chase, Busch will need to average approximately a 14th place finish during the final ten races of the season. Now is it feasible to see Busch make the Chase this year?
”Yeah, you know, certainly it’s feasible. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be. This team is good enough to be that way, and I should be good enough to be that way,” Busch said. “I certainly put us in a hole bigger than it should have been at Dover and at Michigan. Those were entirely just my fault, obviously, and I’ve got to be better than that. We can’t have any more of those. That’s obvious. But we’ve just got to be smart about how we race.
“Now having a win, you know, obviously I think that that treats us a little bit better. We don’t have to race as hard for a win. We don’t have to put ourselves in a bad spot when we’re running third, fourth or fifth to try to get that victory. We can run third, fourth or fifth and that’s a good day for us; that’ll be just fine,” Busch said. “We just need to be able to do that, and I feel like Adam Stevens builds good enough race cars for me that I can do that with. Joe Gibbs Racing does, TRD builds good engines for us, so I’ve got no worries on that front.
The road for Busch is simple, yet complex as he needs top 15’s week after week to make it, and even then it is not guaranteed; this could come down to Richmond.
“I’m going to try not to look at it. I know it’s going to take nine, ten weeks. It’s going to take the full brunt of it. It’s not going to happen in one week. That’s not how this business ever works. You’ve certainly got to play it out all the way through,” Busch said. “That’s one of the things that maybe I haven’t been so good at over the years, but you know, you’ve got to have that focus for not just one week but for a long time, and 10 weeks is a long time, so we’ve just got to do our job, both Adam and I.”
“We can’t screw up. Me, I can’t screw up, and Adam has got to be smart on the box, as well, too, make some good calls,” Busch said. “We made some really good ones today, so there’s no reason why we can’t put ourselves in a good position to win some more.”
Busch also elated on how grateful he was to get a waiver.
”You know, I was very grateful to NASCAR to give us the opportunity to be able to have something to chase after and to give us a chance to race ourselves into the Chase,” Busch said. “You know, we just need to be able to do that, and hopefully we can. It’s certainly not going to be easy, but we didn’t expect it to be, and it never is.”
“So for me, for our team, we’ve got to it does okay, I’ll start over. It does now change how we race for the rest of the year, the rest of the regular season to get ourselves in the Chase, because we have a win now,” Busch said. “I figured the win was going to be the hardest thing to get, but now that that’s here and it’s out of the way, we can now work towards being able to get ourselves top 30 and then just get some good solid finishes, and like I told Bob, you know, when we’re running third, fourth or fifth, we don’t have to take that chance of going for a win and having an opportunity of crashing or something like that. We can just sit there and sit still and be able to finish third, fourth or fifth. You get those kinds of finishes and the points are going to add up and you’re going to be fine making the Chase.”
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