POCONO, Pa. – Running on borrowed time, Kyle Busch scored his first top-10 finish of the season in Sunday’s Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400 at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway in his race to finish inside the top-30 to make this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Busch, in his third Cup race back since being sidelined from injuries sustained in an XFINITY Series crash at Daytona didn’t have the fastest No. 18 M&M’s Crispy Toyota Camry on Sunday, but his ninth place finish definitely helped his cause.
Furthermore, the run served as a nice rebound from a likely top-five finish lost last Sunday at Dover (Del.) International Speedway with a late-race accident.
“We didn’t start the race with what we needed with our M&M’s Crispy Camry,” said Busch. “But, Adam (Stevens, crew chief) made some good adjustments to get us better. “Track position was big, so Adam also made a good call to take two tires and get us some track position and we were able to hold onto it for a while. Those last two cautions didn’t help us, we just couldn’t get going on those last couple of restarts. We’ll take it and move on to Michigan.”
With 12 races remaining before the Chase cutoff, Busch sits 39th in the standings, 151 points behind Trevor Bayne who occupies 30th entering next weekend’s race at Michigan International Speedway on June 14.
In 20 starts at the Irish Hills-based track, the Las Vegas native won there in August 2011, but finished 41st and 39th respectively their last season.
Follow Chris Knight @Knighter01.
