FONTANA, Calif. — Kyle Busch looked poised for a top finish — perhaps a win — at Auto Club Speedway, his No. 18 flying around the track second to Kevin Harvick in Sunday’s 400-mile race.
But with two laps to go in the scheduled 200-lap event, disaster struck for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver in the form of a blown right-front tire. The torn-apart tire sent the No. 18 to pit road and brought out the final caution, saddling the No. 18 team with a 25th-place finish.
It was a painful déjà vu for Busch, as a similar right-front tire issue cost him the XFINITY win in Saturday’s race at the Fontana, California, track.
“That’s pretty disappointing to have two tire failures two days in a row go unexplained,” Busch told USA TODAY after the race.
An unhappy Busch marched almost immediately back to his hauler and was unavailable for further comment and crew chief Adam Stevens was simply left scratching his head.
“I don’t have any idea,” Stevens said at the hauler after the race, referencing the tire snafu. “I think we probably ran something over. It didn’t blow; it just may have just had a leak or something. We hadn’t seen any excessive wear or anything we were even remotely concerned of on the (right-front) all weekend. Left-rears? Absolutely, we had our eyes on them all weekend.
“Had it been the left-rear, I would think I would be looking out for that. But the right-front, that was the last corner of the car that I was concerned about.”
Tire problems are typical to the rough-and-bumpy Auto Club Speedway, a track that causes plenty of tire fall-off throughout the race. But it seemed to plague several drivers throughout Sunday’s event, specifically Brian Vickers, Chris Buescher, Trevor Bayne and Kyle Larson, who experienced an especially hard hit that took his No. 42 out of contention early on in the race.
Nonetheless, Stevens maintains his stance that the No. 18 problem was simply a case of debris, rather than the tires themselves.
“No, whatever we had, I would be shocked if it wasn’t debris-related,” Stevens said. “Probably have some work to do — all of us — to figure out the left-side issues. Which everybody had an eye on all day, but when you blow a right-front like that and haven’t seen excessive wear at all, all weekend — or any issues whatsoever — I’m pretty convinced it was debris-related.”
The 25th-place result caused Busch to fall from second to fifth in the driver standings, with Phoenix winner Kevin Harvick and Auto Club 400 victor Jimmie Johnson sitting 1-2, respectively, in the ranks. The reigning Sprint Cup Series champion has yet to reach Victory Lane this season, his string of eight straight top-fives from late 2015 to now coming to an end in California.
And as the West Coast Swing comes to a close and the series heads into an off-week, Stevens remains positive, but says the team has plenty of work to do.
“I’m looking forward to going home — We’ve been out here for 19 days straight,” Stevens said. “We’re all looking forward to go see our families and kind of put this one behind us, you know?
“It was a decent weekend up until two laps to go — you’ve got to take the positives away from it. We probably didn’t give him the best race car and as a team, we were able to figure it out, put forth what was to be a second-place effort. They just don’t always go your way — this one didn’t.”