No active full-time driver has more NASCAR Cup Series wins than Kyle Busch, but it’s now been 60 races since the future Hall of Famer last visited Victory Lane. He did everything he could to change that fact Sunday at Circuit of the Americas but once again, he came up a little bit short in the end.
Busch had some breathing room out front before a late-race caution (for his teammate stuck in the gravel), setting up an absolute dogfight for the win. He made his car as wide as possible, but he simply didn’t have the car under him, fading to fifth.
Kyle Busch, Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet
Photo by: James Gilbert / Getty Images
“We had a really good No. 8 Chevy to be able to push that hard,” said Busch, who recorded his first top-five since last September’s Southern 500 at Darlington. “I just wish that maybe we had equal tires to the No. 20 [Christopher Bell]. I don’t know if that was all the difference. I know he was really fast and he had a good race car.
“I feel like that might have been able to help hold me on a little bit better to him, but even that last yellow flag that we had, I felt like the gap that I had to the field, I was far enough out front that I could run the clean lines, the lines that I wanted, to preserve the tires and take care of them as much as I could to see if he could get there. But once we had that yellow, then it was just defensive mode. You’re in complete and utter just beat the heck out of the tires at that point, and I just didn’t have it over the No. 20 [Bell].”
Contact “ruined our race car”
While the caution made things a lot more difficult for Busch, the critical moment came with six laps to go when Bell and Busch slammed doors at high speed when entering the esses. It was a direct hit to the right-rear wheel on Busch’s machine.
“Hate it that the contact that we made between two and three ruined our race car too,” explained Busch. “It bent the right-rear toe link and knocked everything out of it. I just didn’t have anything there at the end to compete with those guys. That doesn’t go for what our Chevy was today. Randall [Burnett, crew chief] and the guys did a great job adjusting it through practice, qualifying and into the race, and giving me a piece to go out there and do that well, and to get this Chevrolet up front like we did.”
Kyle Busch, racing for Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, remains a fan favorite while he aims to break a 60-race winless drought.
Photo by: Jonathan Bachman – Getty Images
Busch, who turns 40 this year, remains trapped in the longest winless streak of his career, but the two-time NASCAR Cup champion continues to prove that he has the ability to go up there and race for the win. But if COTA is a sign of things to come, then that No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet will find Victory Lane at some point during the 2025 season…it’s just a matter of when.
Photos from COTA Race
In this article
Nick DeGroot
NASCAR Cup
Kyle Busch
Richard Childress Racing
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