What was good for one Busch brother at Las Vegas was bad for the other.
Last Sunday, Kurt Busch got a long-awaited first victory at his home track in the first Round of 12 race in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff. The win propelled the driver of the No. 1 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet, who entered the event 12th in the standings, into the Round of 8.
The victory, however, had an adverse effect on the title chances of reigning series champion Kyle Busch, who fell nine points below the Playoff cut line with two races left in the Round of 12. The first of those is Sunday’s YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway (2 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), a track where Kyle scored his only victory 12 years ago.
Kyle is a realist. With no victories so far this season and a scant four Playoff points in the bank, the driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota already has predicted the end of his title defense in the Round of 12. That antidote, of course, is a victory—but neither Talladega nor the Charlotte Roval is a particularly auspicious venue for the two-time series champion.
On the other hand, the position in the standings gives Kyle a certain sense of mission when it comes to Talladega, where he has a career average of 20.7 in 30 starts.
“For us and where we’re at, we don’t have anything to lose,” Busch says. “We have to go race. We can’t just sit there and ride and protect a cushion-like we have been able to do in the past. We’re going to be on the outside looking in, so we have to go for broke and do all we can do to get those stage wins and points and try to get a race win to automatically punch your ticket to the next round.
“We have been good at the superspeedway races so far this year, but none of them have turned out to be great finishes. Really feel like we had a shot at all three of those races at Daytona and Talladega earlier this year and hope we can have another shot again this weekend with our M&M’s Camry.”
Busch isn’t the only driver in danger in the Round of 12. Given the unpredictable nature of racing both at Talladega and the Charlotte Roval, even the top two drivers in the standings—Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin—could be in jeopardy if two different Playoff drivers below them in the standings follow Kurt Busch’s lead and win the next two races.
The most likely to accomplish that feat at Talladega are Team Penske teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, who lead all other active drivers at the 2.66-mile track with five wins and three wins, respectively.
Source: Reid Spencer | NASCAR Wire Service
