(Photo: Trish McCormack | The Podium Finish)
BRISTOL, Tenn. — In the final corner of the 2022 Food City Dirt Race, Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe made contact and the seas parted for Kyle Busch’s first and only victory of the season.
Though he’s conquered the dirt, Busch still doesn’t view the race highly.
“It certainly shines a light of just how important every single race, every single week, is,” Busch told the media on Saturday. “For the nature of us going to all these different venues and having the diversity that we do in the race tracks that we go to is fun to a point. I think this was a little bit more gimmicky … just not a true race track that we’ve been accustomed to going to.
“But that dirt race last year was certainly significant to my years of winning races and capitalizing on that when we did. Lucky for us.”
Since that victory, things have looked different for the two-time champion. He moved on from Joe Gibbs Racing, joining Chevrolet and Richard Childress Racing on a multi-year deal beginning this season.
Busch wasted no time after the switch, winning the second race of the season at Auto Club Speedway. Through seven events, Busch has four top-10 finishes and an average result of 9.7. He’s currently sixth in driver’s points, 44 behind Ross Chastain for the lead.
A lot of that early success, Busch said, is because of crew chief Randall Burnett. Prior to pairing with Busch, Burnett called the shots for Tyler Reddick and won three races together last season.
“Working with Randall (Burnett) has been super good,” Busch explained. “We’ve had a great relationship thus far. And just the communication styles – his background, my background being from similar demographics if you will from racing in the short-track, late model, ranks … things like that. We understand each other a lot. It’s just the nature of how do we apply what we’re doing to the race track better. I feel like that’s kind of our struggle and we’re continuing to work on that and find the pieces of how we can further improve on our processes of how we go about building a setup and making it translate to be successful at the track.
“California (Auto Club) was awesome. That was a lot based off what they did last year and it worked. Some of the other stuff that we’ve done this year we’ve based off of that, but we’ve also kind of gone towards something more similar to what I’ve been accustomed to driving; being a little bit on the snugger-side than what [Tyler] Reddick was always used to.”
After finishing runner-up two weeks ago at Circuit of the Americas, Busch finished 14th at Richmond Raceway last Sunday. He thrived at Richmond during his days at JGR, winning six times. But in his first race back behind the wheel of a Chevrolet, Busch lacked the handling to contend for a victory.
Sunday’s Toyota Owners 400 utilized the new short track package, which includes a smaller spoiler and the removal of engine and diffuser strakes. The package debuted at Phoenix Raceway and also got used at COTA.
(Photo: Trish McCormack | The Podium Finish)
“So far with the lower downforce package, I have been loose,” Busch said. “We have not figured out how to get my back end into the race track like I need it to be. That has definitely been our struggle. I don’t see the same struggle from some of the other guys. They’ve been able to figure it out a lot better than we have, so they’ve been faster.
“As far as the aero-deficiencies that you see following other cars – yes, it’s better. On a one to 10 scale, if we were a seven bad before, I think we’re still probably a five. When I ran the Xfinity car at Phoenix (Raceway), I would say that it had one, one and a half, maybe a two at the worst moments of aero-deficiencies following people. So the way we used do things is better than the Next Gen way of doing things.”
After rain led the postponement of practice on Friday at Bristol, Busch started sixth in qualifying Heat Race 4 via random draw. He improved four spots to finish second behind Bubba Wallace and will start Sunday’s race in fifth.
Regardless, Busch knows he’ll have his work cut out for him.
“These things here, you’re literally trying to not spin out when you’re going around there on the race track,” Busch said. “So how do you make a pass when you’re already past the limit of spinning out? It’s tough. It just makes for a tough race. Makes it for a little better track position race. No different than anything else that we really do.”
Sunday’s Food City Dirt Race is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. Kyle Larson is the polesitter.
