Kyle Busch likes his chances in Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol
Kyle Busch (18) battles brother Kurt earlier this season at Daytona. Kyle has won the past two Sprint Cup events at Bristol Motor Speedway, but he expects his brother to be among the contenders in Sunday's Food City 500.
// Jim Fluharty, NASCAR Illustrated
Kyle Busch may be winless in 2010 and without a top-10 finish through four races, but the Joe Gibbs Racing driver will still roll into Bristol Motor Speedway as a favorite to win this weekend’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.
Then again, when you’ve won two straight races on the tiny, high-banked half-mile track, you probably aren’t going to be overlooked.
But his past success, Busch said, doesn’t necessarily give him an edge for Sunday’s Food City 500, stop No. 5 for the Cup series.
‘I don't think there's an edge for anybody,” Busch said. “Sometimes it's about circumstances, it's about luck. For ourselves, we're looking to take the same setup that we've run there in the past, maybe a couple different, minor things we're going to change, nothing too big.
“You can be patient. You can lead 430 laps and not win, yet you can [lead] the final 28 laps and go on to win. Doesn't matter much where you're running until after the final pit stop, see how things play out in the race, see how you position yourself at the end of the race.
“We look forward to going to Bristol because I've been able to do all of those things. It's been a fun place for me to race. I've learned how to grow accustomed to the track relatively quickly since it's been redone. Hopefully we can have the same success yet again.”
Busch, 15th in points, has three wins and seven top-10 finishes in 10 career starts at Bristol. It’s a place, he said, “where [once] you get it figured out, you can run well there.
“Jeff Gordon had it figured out. He was finishing top three … a lot of times he was there,” he said.
But with the introduction of the Car of Tomorrow, which debuted at Bristol in 2007, “he kind of missed a little bit,” Busch said of his Hendrick Motorsports rival.
“I think he's going to be pretty good this weekend. I remember last fall racing with him quite a bit. Mark Martin was really good there, too. Those are some guys we're going to be worried about this time around as well as [teammate] Denny [Hamlin] being a good guy to race with and of course Kurt [Busch].
“[Kurt] was real fast there last fall. I think he finished third. I'm not sure if he led the most laps or might have been in second for the most laps. He'll be fast there, especially with [crew chief Steve] Addington. They'll know what they're doing there. They'll be somebody we have to worry about.”
It’s not unusual for tempers to flare, emotions to run a bit on the wild side and sheet metal to be traded when the series returns to BMS. The tight confines of the track offer little room for passing, less room for error, and a driver’s patience can be severely tested during the course of a 500-lap race.
With NASCAR officials practically encouraging drivers to show more emotion, the race could provide race fans with quite a bit of action, on and off the race track.
The short tracks on the schedule – Martinsville follows Bristol and, after another weekend off, the series heads to Phoenix – might stir the emotional pot, coming on the heels of the Carl Edwards/Brad Keselowski incident at Atlanta, but Busch doesn’t sound concerned. He’s been down that road, made mistakes and says he’s learned plenty from them. While he’s only 24, he’s already in the midst of his sixth full season in the series.
“I was racing at Loudon a few years ago with Kasey Kahne,” he said. “Unfortunately on my mistake, I made contact with him off Turn 2, spun him out. He backed into the fence. Then a lap later when I came back around, he turned up into my race car, kind of retaliated right then and there under caution and bent my car up pretty good while I was running fifth.
“I've been through it. You know, I've never been through the case which happened [at Atlanta]. But … this sport has always been self-policing. The drivers try to take things into their own hands. Sometimes it gets a little too far.
“The best scenario I had [was] a few years ago when Tony Stewart wanted to get back at me for racing him too hard at Las Vegas. He missed his chance and got into the wall a little bit and I went on to finish second; he went on to finish 12th or 13th and was real mad at me after the race.”
Busch said he met with Stewart weeks after the incident in the two-time Cup champion’s motorhome.
“I felt like that was probably one of the best things that I've done in my career,” Busch said. “He was a veteran driver. … You got more of his point when it comes from a veteran driver who has been around the sport and who has been through some of the same things I went through at that time.”
Shenanigans aside, Busch is focused on the finish, and not the sideshow, at Bristol.
“We're looking forward to it,” he said. “We feel like we've got a good baseline setup that runs well there. We're hoping for some magic to come back and hopefully get us back into victory lane.”
