BRISTOL, Tenn. – Who knows how much a pit road speeding penalty had to do with Kyle Busch’s charge through the field Wednesday night, which ended with the 32-year-old back in Victory Lane?
Busch was angry, he admitted as much afterward, and he sometimes races harder when he’s angry.
He was so irate during Wednesday night’s UNOH 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway that the Camping World Truck Series owner/driver drove from the back of the field to the front in what might have been record time.
Granted, it doesn’t take long to knock off a lap at Bristol, a .533-mile, high-banked oval. Just a few seconds really.
So how long did it take Busch? Fifty laps? Less than 27 miles? That’s barely from the race track to Abingdon, Virginia, and the recently shuttered Moonlite Drive-In.
Barely long enough for a trip to the concession stand to grab a final hot dog and drink. At the track, not the drive-in.
Not nearly as quickly as the time it took Busch to go from Stage 2 winner to see-you-later, though, busted for speeding when passing through what amounts to a NASCAR school zone.
Mad?
“I guess I was tonight,” Busch said when asked after career win No. 49 in the series. “Certainly I knew they weren’t picking on me but, you know, it was 35.01 (mph) so it was right there, right on the limit and was frustrating for sure. The pit road speed limit at BMS is 30 mph. But much like the highways and byways, NASCAR drivers can fudge. Ease it all the way up to 34.999 mph. Anything beyond that, however, and you get sent to the rear of the field.
Busch was frustrated enough that he voiced his displeasure with a few choice expletives via the team radio. Later he chose his words a bit more carefully.
Those came after a final caution flag with less than five laps remaining in the UNOH 200, a caution that proved to be the only thing that could slow Busch down. His words were harsh then as well. Then, a bit more resigned.
The reset pushed the race three laps beyond its scheduled distance but Busch persevered, rocketing away from two-time series champ Matt Crafton like a man in a hurry and someone with places to go.
“I think the bottom (lane) was still dominant,” explained Crafton. “I knew he (Busch) would be able to launch hard right there.”
Later, once the race was won and there was nothing between Busch and the checkered flag, his words were a bit more measured.
“We were able to overcome it,” Busch said of the earlier setback.
Yes, don’t speed on pit road and there’s no reason to be angry, no reason to go to the back of the field. But racers push the limit all the time, it’s what they’re paid to do. If such instances sometimes give Busch a little extra incentive, so be it.
Busch is an extremely talented racer but he didn’t go from the back to the front all by himself. His No. 46 Toyota, built by his own Kyle Busch Motorsports group, gave him a piece that clearly was better than those around him.
And lest anyone complain that Busch had an unfair advantage with the use of his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup or XFINITY Series pit crew, think again.
The folks on the crew, including crew chief Cody Glick, oversee Busch’s Late Model team. That doesn’t make them any less talented but they’re not quite the same caliber as those working the NASCAR pits on Sunday afternoons.
It was the last start of the season in the series for Busch, meaning the career-win record of 51 victories by Ron Hornaday Jr. is safe for now. Hornaday will go into the NASCAR Hall of Fame next January as the winningest driver in Truck Series history.
Busch trails Hornaday by two. It’s likely that next year he will be the winningest driver in both the Truck and XFINITY Series.
He won three times in just seven starts this season with his Truck team.
He might not have been angry in all of them, but if he was, well, we’ve seen how that can turn out.