But doom finally stayed away. When the checkered flag finally fell to close out his third-place effort in the fourth race of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs, Busch wasn’t headed to Victory Lane but was ready to celebrate nonetheless at a track that’s been his most difficult on the circuit.
"Yeah, I want champagne and to do donuts right now," Busch said on pit road, "but I think they frown on that if you’re third."
Busch — who had crashed in three of his last four trips to the 1.5-mile layout — rallied from a pit road speeding penalty just before the midpoint of Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400, then overcame an overheating motor to come home behind the 1-2 combo of race-winner Joey Logano and runner-up Kyle Larson.
The podium result gave Busch an impressive stat for his resume: He now has a top-five finish at each active track on the Sprint Cup Series schedule. The effort also gave him solid footing after the opening leg of the three-race Contender Round in this year’s new-look Chase while several championship hopefuls took a major hit in the standings.
"There may have been a couple other cars out there today that didn’t have good finishes that could’ve finished third, fourth, fifth. I felt like we were a good sixth- or seventh-place car, but circumstances worked in our favor and we wound up third," Busch said. "Again, can’t say enough about the effort of this team. The guys gave me a good piece, but we certainly were mindful of those that were having trouble around us."
Busch was able to minimize his own misfortune in a day swirling with it. He had worked his way to the fringes of the top five early on before he was penalized for speeding entering the pits in the 124th of 267 laps. Busch restarted behind all the other lead-lap cars, but 50 laps later, was back into the top 10.
A single-digit finish might have been moral victory enough, but Busch kept marching forward, his climb accelerated by the pitfalls that snared drivers ahead of him — Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne and Jamie McMurray, among others. That combination of factors meant that the No. 18 team’s outlook changed dramatically down the stretch.
"I think the way this Chase is laid out, you’ve got to manage expectations," said Dave Rogers, Busch’s crew chief. "Yeah, it’s great to win and you’ve got go to Homestead gunning to win, but at this stage of the Chase you’ve got to manage expectations. We said if we could get out of here with a top-10, we’ll race them at Charlotte and Talladega as a wild-card. To come out of here with a top-five, that exceeds our goal, so you’ve got to be happy with it."
Not that there wasn’t some 11th-hour fretting from both the cockpit and atop the pit box. Rogers opted to add more tape to the car’s grille in an effort to increase downforce, but the engine’s temperatures rose and Busch began to see and smell smoke in the driver’s compartment. With all fingers crossed, the car made it to the checkered flag with motor intact.
"Just got a little too greedy and got the engine too warm, but those are those gremlins," Rogers said. "You’re running top five with 10 laps to go, you hear a lot of things in those race cars. We probably got too hot, but we were trying to get all we could get."
For Rogers, it was the team’s latest display of character in the early stages of the Chase. In the opening Challenger Round, Busch notched top-10 finishes in all three races despite a crash in New Hampshire and a frantic search for balance in Dover.
To build on that foundation with a top-five at a track that has been the team’s Achilles’ Heel could take some of the pressure off for the round’s next two races — Saturday at Charlotte and in two weeks at Talladega. But even putting his Kansas demons in the rearview and leaving with a second-place rank in the series standings, Busch cautioned that by no means did he feel home-free from a potential elimination.
"It’s early. Anything can happen," Busch said. "Like I said before, I mean, racing is a fickle business. I can go next week and have the same issues. We can have something other than what they had happen to us and put us in a bad spot. We just don’t need that. We just need to go next week, have a good week at Charlotte, finish top-10, top-five if we can, and take a win, sure, but first things first; let’s get to finishing top-five and racing these guys for wins and then we’ll go start shooting for wins.
"Like I said, another solid week will put us in a good position going to Talladega, where guys that had a bad week this week, and if they have a good week next week, they’re still going to be behind us and (that) leaves our situation better come Talladega."
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