NASCAR Dover preview: Chase success still eludes Kyle Busch

Joe Gibbs Racing opened NASCAR’s playoffs with Denny Hamlin winning at Chicagoland Speedway. Directly behind him was teammate Carl Edwards. Last week, in the second Chase for the Sprint Cup event Matt Kenseth and Hamlin gave JGR another 1-2 finish.

It’s unsurprising than that Kenseth, Hamlin and Edwards hold the top three positions in the standings heading into Sunday’s first round elimination race at Dover International Speedway, a mere continuation of JGR’s pervasive regular-season dominance, as the organization won eight of the 11 races entering the playoffs.

Besides Kenseth and Hamlin having already secured promotion to the next bracket and Edwards a near-lock to do so -- he’s 33 points ahead of 13th-ranked Paul Menard, the first driver below the cut line -- the strong start to the Chase provided another advantage when torrential rain forced the cancellation of qualifying Friday and NASCAR to set the starting lineup off points. Accordingly, JGR drivers will lineup 1-2-3.

Yet as Kenseth, Hamlin and Edwards have maintained their high performance level through two Chase races and can already look ahead to Round 2, JGR’s fourth driver, Kyle Busch, finds himself mired in a far different and all too familiar position.

Residing one point behind Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the final transfer spot, a poor finish for Busch Sunday equates to almost assured playoff elimination. A scenario that would have been considered unfathomable two weeks ago with Busch riding a wave of momentum beget by four victories to overcome devastating injuries that sidelined him 11 races to earn a once seemingly improbable Chase berth.

“I think that’s just sort of the name of what our season has been -- just win and make enough points in order to get ourselves to transfer through or to transfer into the Chase and actually become Chase eligible,” Busch said Friday. “It’s no different than what we have to do right now essentially.”

Busch’s plight of needing to stave off elimination is a byproduct of a right-front tire failure last week that sent him crashing into the Turn 4 wall, negating a certain top-10. It was the kind of afternoon that encapsulates Busch’s Chase struggles through the years.

A season ago Busch was second in points heading into the Round 2 elimination race, needing to just finish 24th or better at Talladega Superspeedway. Thinking a conservative approach was the best way to circumvent the volatile nature of restrictor-plate racing, he elected to stay towards the back. But when an accident occurred ahead, Busch was tagged from behind by Austin Dillon and sent spinning into the inside wall. He finished 40th, seven points shy of advancing.

Talladega, which he later described as “heartbreaking,” was similar to how Busch’s other strong Chase efforts came undone -- be it due to accidents, misfortune or under performance. There was a crash while running third at Kansas Speedway in 2012, or as the No. 1 seed getting a piece of a multi-accident in the 2008 playoff opener.

“It’s September, October, November right? That’s typically the time of the season in which something seems to happen to myself,” Busch said. Not sure why, but it is what it is. This is the time of year that you have to have everything kind of go your way and everything go right.

“In years past, I don’t know that it’s necessarily been a particular track or a particular moment that’s knocked us out of the Chase before. It doesn’t happen the same spot every single year. It happens all over the place. It was Martinsville one year, it was Kansas one year, it was Charlotte another year, it was Talladega last year and right now it seems to be (New Hampshire) this year. It never ends. It’s just a matter of trying to get through those bad moments and get on to the next week.”

NASCAR’s knockout, elimination-based playoffs allows for a driver to weather a cataclysmic result by winning, which automatically guarantees advancement to the subsequent round.

That lifeline would seem to favor Busch, a prolific winner whose career victory total since his 2005 rookie season is eclipsed only by Jimmie Johnson’s 60 wins over that same span. Except of Busch’s 33 wins, all but one occurred in a regular-season event and his lone Chase victory transpired when he wasn’t even playoff eligible.

But what’s encouraging for Busch is he doesn’t need a win Sunday. If he can muster a solid finish, his championship hopes will likely stay afloat at least another round.

“We just have to make sure that we do what we’ve always done here in Dover and that’s to run strong, up front and collect a good finish here,” Busch said. “Hopefully the points will take care of themselves.

“We’re just going to power on through and do what we need to do this weekend to get to the next round.”