RELATED: Series standings | Chase Grid | Clinching scenarios for Phoenix
AVONDALE, Ariz. — Heading into the next-to-last race of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs, Kyle Busch holds a second-place rung in the standings as the highest points-earner without an automatic berth in the championship round.
When the green flag falls Sunday, his 10th-place starting spot — combined with the relative starting positions of his Chase competition — will instantly relegate him to the last driver in, his cushion above the cut line chopped from 11 points to five.
Busch knew his plight just minutes after Friday’s Coors Light Pole Qualifying at Phoenix International Raceway. In his snap assessment of the situation, the 30-year-old driver said he has a target in mind for where he’ll need to be after 312 laps Sunday, determining if the closest brush with a premier series championship of his 11-year career will have a chance at coronation next weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“Right now for us, our best scenario is to run hard and run strong and do what we know how to do and come out of here with a better than seventh-place finish. I think that’ll get it done,” Busch said. “We’ll see how that goes. I think that we should be able to run that well and we’re just going to race the race, race our own race right now until it gets down to about the last 100 laps, and we’ll start seeing what we need to do to make up spots, but literally, man, I give it everything I got every lap anyway. I don’t know that I’ll be able to make up from if we’re running 12th to get to that seventh mark. I don’t know that I’ll be able to make that up.”
Busch’s improbable path to potentially snagging a seat at the title-eligible table — from severe leg injuries in February, an 11-race absence, a Chase exemption, and a summertime winning spree — reaches another crucial test in Sunday’s Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM).
Saturday’s pair of Sprint Cup practices took on extra importance, as Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing crew searched for more speed out of his No. 18 Toyota, which hovered closer to the fringes of the top 10 than the top five in Friday’s warm-ups. Though he has finishes of fifth (at Martinsville) and fourth (at Texas) in the bank for this three-race elimination series, Busch said he’s not counting anything as a given.
“We’ve gotta be … it’s definitely going to have to be better than 10th,” Busch said, acknowledging some of the benefits of teammate Matt Kenseth‘s test here last month. “We’ll see how we race, or how everybody else races, but according to qualifying and speeds from practice right now, we need to be smart about what we do (Saturday) and get a good race car going.”
Busch has plenty of history in Victory Lane at the 1-mile track with 11 NASCAR national series wins (one in Sprint Cup, eight in XFINITY and two in Camping World Truck Series competition). Racing for a Cup championship this late in the season, though, is a new experience.
Busch has made strides by surviving the stages in the second year of the Chase’s still-new format, but he’ll need another scrappy effort Sunday to emerge from the jumble near the cutoff point, with just 11 points separating second through fifth — in order: himself, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr. and Carl Edwards — in the standings.
His team had some of the numbers crunched shortly after his place on the starting grid was settled Friday. Will he want status updates in close to real time come Sunday?
“Not till later in the game,” Busch said. “Really, like I said before, I mean what am I going to do different? I don’t know if I’m going to drive from 12th or 15th, if that’s where we’re running, I don’t know if I can drive there from seventh. I give it everything I got anyway.”