No. 18 driver has won three straight races with three different rules packages
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LONG POND, Pa. — The 2015 season has been one of change for Kyle Busch, missing the first 11 races of the season with a broken leg and a broken foot and then coming back with a new crew chief, Adam Stevens, for his No. 18 ride. On Friday, the winner of the last three NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races said embracing change has been key to his success.
As the Joe Gibbs Racing driver attempts to become the first driver to win four consecutive races since 2007 when Jimmie Johnson did it on the way to his second Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship, Busch hopes this strong streak will carry over into the fall to follow in Johnson’s footsteps.
“I look forward to continuing on our Chase march here and then once we get to Chicago, being able to capitalize on this hot summer to have a continuation of that into the Chase,” Busch said.
The driver has not only won three races in a row, but has done so with three different rules packages. His first win in the string came with the low downforce package at Kentucky Speedway, followed by a victory under 2015 rules at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. His first win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway the next week came with NASCAR’s high drag package.
“With the different aero packages, I actually was pretty excited about it,” Busch said. “I kind of like change, and I feel like I’m the best at being able to adapt to it the fastest before crew chiefs and engineers get too much of an understanding of the basis of what they have to work on to make those packages better in order to get their drivers better, their cars better and to be able to keep up with me. I kind of like the change.”
Busch likes change so much that he suggested running last weekend’s rules at Pocono Raceway, a track where he’s winless in NASCAR’s premier series.
“I actually wouldn’t mind if we had that high drag package here at Pocono,” Busch said. “I think here would definitely be a place that you’d want to see it with these long straightaways. That would certainly make for a really interesting race.”
Pocono is one of only five tracks where he hasn’t won a race. The other four — Martinsville Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway — are in the Chase, and the last three are 1.5-mile tracks, which make up half of the races in NASCAR’s playoffs.
When the Chase starts, Busch will have run only one points race with the 2015 package on a 1.5-mile track, Charlotte in the Coca-Cola 600. He earned an 11th-place result behind JGR teammate and winner Carl Edwards. Busch acknowledged his lack of track time with the current package, and the driver may need to learn behind the wheel during the final 10 races of the season.
“The lower downforce at Kentucky was fun,” Busch said. “It’s definitely a lot harder than what a lot of the other mile-and-a-halfs have been this year. I haven’t run in a whole lot of them. But just from the drivers’ sense of what I got, the off-throttle time was a heck of a lot more. Everybody enjoyed it a lot so I hope to continue on down that path.”
Although Busch’s first win of 2015 came on a road course last month at Sonoma Raceway, Busch said next week’s return to road racing may present the biggest obstacle over the final six races of the regular season as he needs to make and then stay in the top 30 in points to secure a playoff berth.
“With Watkins Glen coming up next week, that’s going to be another hard one to get through so that’s going to be a tough challenge for myself in the left foot. So we’ll make it, and I think we’ll be OK like Sonoma,” Busch said. “It’ll be sore on Monday afterwards, and we’ll continue to ice it and make it feel better.”
Sunday’s Windows 10 400 (1:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM) will be the first time this season Busch will run a second race at the same track. He finished ninth in June, and hopes to replace the zero in his victory column with a win based on JGR adjustments over the last six weeks.
“I’ve never won at Pocono Raceway, and I hope that’s about to change,” Busch said, using the “c” word again. “We’ve certainly had some good runs over the years, sometimes in the spring race, sometimes in the summer race, but overall, I feel like our team’s really come a long way. I like where we’re going and where we’re at so I just hope that we can continue that here this weekend and get ourselves a win and make it four in a row.”