DOVER, Del. – Kyle Busch’s chances for winning his fourth Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race of the season vaporized after the Joe Gibbs Racing driver lost his driveshaft in his No. 18 Pedigree Toyota Camry while running third in Sunday’s AAA 400 at Dover (Del.) International Speedway.
In the opening laps of the race, Busch complained to his Adam Stevens-led team that he had a serious vibration in the drivetrain – but as the race progressed, the vibration continued to worsen and shortly after a Lap 260 restart, Busch’s driveshaft finally broke, oiling the track and sending the 2015 Cup champion to the garage for repairs at Lap 272.
Initially, Busch thought he had an engine problem but as the laps ticked away, he realized his preliminary diagnosis of the issue was correct, and it was just a matter of time before the part finally broke.
“It just kept getting worse and worse the more the day was going,” Busch explained.
“Especially after restarts, it was really, really bad. I was just trying to bide it out, see if we could make it to the end. At first, I thought it was an engine problem, but that wasn’t the case. It was certainly the drive train, something else.
“This isn’t a very popular of a failure for us. We have an idea, I already know what was wrong, but we have to go back to the shop and diagnosis it and find out why it was wrong.”
Before the failure, Busch believed he had a car capable of finishing inside the top-three.
I thought we were going to be top-three car for sure – no question about that – but then what was going to happen with the guys in front of us. I felt like if we could have jumped them In track position, maybe we could have done something better about keeping the clean air and keeping the lead and stuff like that.
“It just got so bad there that last run vibrating it even blew the shifter ball off the shifter and when it finally broke, I couldn’t even grab the shifter in order to knock it out of gear so I could just push the clutch in, so I had to nurse it back and get out of everybody’s way.”
Sunday’s race was just another example of the Las Vegas, Nevada’s struggles in the spring race at the 1.0-mile track.
Dating back to 2014, the first race at the Monster Mile has brought four finishes of 30th or worse, including Sunday when Busch finished 35th.
Last year, Busch won the pole for the AAA 400 and finished 16th but not before he experienced problems on pit road which resulted in a tire falling off his car and initiating a four-week suspension for Stevens, tire carrier Kenny Barber and tire changer Jake Seminara for violating safety protocols.
Busch also suffered his first DNF (did not finish) of the 2018 season.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
