WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – Kyle Busch was blunt when describing the recent downward spiral of the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing team.
June could not have been better for Busch. He started out by winning from the pole at World Wide Technology Raceway. The victory, his third of the season, started a streak of five top 10s—including four top fives. Busch climbed to third in the NASCAR Cup point standings.
But four of the next five races were absolutely brutal for the two-time champion during a tailspin that included wrecks at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Michigan Speedway, a 21st-place result at Pocono Raceway—where he had won four of the last 10 races—and a sour engine last week at The Brickyard.
“The mind-set is to stop the bleeding,” Busch said during his media availability at Watkins Glen on Saturday. “We have to figure out a way of being able to bounce back in races, which we were. We had some good luck on our side, some good fortune. Maybe we used it all up, but the fact of the matter is when things kind of go awry, it just seems to snowball from there, and we’re not able to stop the bleeding.
“That’s kind of been our way. We were third in points, 30 from the lead and looking for the regular season championship seven weeks ago. And now, I don’t even know where we are. I stopped paying attention because I know it’s not good.”
After Sunday’s 36th-place finish on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course, Busch dropped to 11th in the standings. Although he finished sixth in the first two stages of the race, on Lap 41, Busch reported the possibility of a broken valve spring on the No. 8 Chevrolet. He fell two laps down.
“We need to have a good race—a good, solid race,” Busch said. “And we were looking for that last week and I thought we had that. We got, I think, fifth or sixth in each stage. We were running fourth in the running order and I felt like our lap times were comparable to the leaders—probably better than third place.
“I’m not sure about being able to catch the No. 34 (winner Michael McDowell), but that would have been a solid day…one that we needed and just didn’t get it.”
Still, Busch’s confidence remains high. Having raced with two NASCAR juggernauts—Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing—and owned and operated his own winning organization, he understands what it takes to be successful.
While his relationship with Randall Burnett remains in the honeymoon stage after just 10 months together, he’s pleased with the progress they have made in their first season in Cup.
“I like the group and the stuff that we do: the philosophies, ideas, what we learn and all that stuff,” Busch said. “It’s all really good. It’s just a matter of putting it all together and having it just run smoothly. And that’s not due to anybody’s fault. It’s all a lot of circumstances. Loudon, we struggled. We completely missed the boat on that one. But then we had a full-fledged effort—work in the simulator and everywhere else—on what we can do to figure out Richmond to not have that same thing happen again. We had a solid race at Richmond and we ran third. So there was a playbook there that we were able to get a fix, and that is, to me, encouraging.
“To me, the struggles have just kind of been the ‘stop the bleeding’ pieces. Just stuff out of our control that kind of keeps happening, which I guess some of it was in our control. Pocono, for instance, we just had really bad pit stops all day. Every time we thought we had an opportunity to jump some guys and get forward a little bit, we had a 15-second pit stop. So just stuff like that. We can’t keep beating ourselves.”
Busch would settle for a little luck on his side. The 38-year-old racer has competed long enough to know that, in addition to talent, strategy and perfectly prepared cars, good fortune has played a part of his 63 Cup wins.
After the last month, Busch would love to turn his luck around.
“I don’t know what to do to change it,” Busch said. “There’s all the rabbits’ feet in the world, all the four-leaf clovers and everything else. A lot of people say that they don’t believe in luck. There is luck, trust me. I know. I’ve been in this for a long time. We had four or five weeks where we had really good luck. We stuffed it into the tire barriers and we didn’t break a radiator or anything like that at the Chicago Street Race. We came back and we finished fifth. That was a lucky day. We stole one on that one.”
With just two races remaining before the Playoffs begin, Busch remains optimistic. He understands racing can be cyclical, but drivers are notoriously impatient—especially Busch.
“We kind of burned all of that up there and now we’re paying the price for it over here,” Busch said. “So now, ‘How do you turn it around and get it headed back in the right direction?’ I’ve had talks like this with (Matt) Kenseth and Carl (Edwards) before—where you have winless seasons and you wonder what’s not working and there’s nothing that you can pinpoint yourself to.
“Martin Truex Jr., and I talked about it before, where it’s like, ‘Man, you just have to wait. You just have to wait until it turns around and eventually, it’ll turn around and it’ll be fine.’
“I guess look at Truex and the struggles of last year and then his turnaround for this season. They’re not wrong, but I’m a very impatient person, and I’m ready for the results to be indicative to how I know they should be.”
Follow Lee Spencer on Twitter @CandiceSpencer or email her at: [email protected].
