Lost amid Kyle Busch’s post-race press conference theatrics last weekend, where just a singular question elicited a terse response with him dropping the mic in apparent frustration, which then generated a week-long debate on social media and talk radio about how a driver should act in defeat, is that Joe Gibbs Racing may have turned the performance corner.
Joe Gibbs Racing shaking off early season slump
It’s been a decade since Joe Gibbs Racing went this late into a season without a win, but signs indicate a turnaround is afoot.
Busch (second) along with teammates Matt Kenseth (fourth) and Denny Hamlin (fifth) each finished fifth or better in the Coca-Cola 600 Sunday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway, marking the first time JGR’s placed three of its four drivers in the top five in a race this season. (JGR’s other driver, rookie Daniel Suarez, finished 11th.)
Normally, one of NASCAR’s upper echelon organizations making up 60 percent of the top-five finishers in a given race wouldn’t be cause for great celebration. Except JGR hasn’t had anything resembling its customary performance level in 2017, attributed to a redesigned Toyota Camry nose and a lower downforce aerodynamic rules package stripping the team of its superiority.
A year ago, JGR’s four-driver lineup saw Busch, Hamlin, Kenseth and Carl Edwards, who retired over the offseason, combine to win seven of the first 12 races. This dominance prompted conjecture whether JGR would eventually form a stranglehold of the four-driver championship race later in the season, making the title playoff round an inner-team competition. (Ultimately, only Busch and Edwards ended up advancing.)
This year, success has been fleeting and the frustration palpable. For the first time in a decade, JGR has gone 12 races into a season without a victory, and any championship talk has been tempered by the reality Kenseth and Suarez wouldn’t even qualify for playoffs if the postseason were to start today. Meanwhile, two lesser caliber organizations, Richard Childress Racing and Roush Fenway Racing, have won twice and once, respectively.
Perhaps this explains Busch’s brusqueness in the aftermath of Austin Dillon winning at Charlotte. After having positioned himself well to snap JGR’s early season skid and his own winless drought that stretches back 28 races to the Brickyard 400 last July, the opportunity evaporated when Dillon’s fuel tank refused to hit ‘E.’ Or maybe, Busch’s annoyance had to do with yet another potential victory slipping away for the fifth time this season.
”Nothing surprises me anymore. Congratulations,” Busch said when asked about Dillon winning his first career race.
Regardless of the reason for why Busch acted so curt, the silver lining is that JGR is seemingly poised to reassert itself at the front of the field.
Busch’s runner-up represented his third consecutive top-five finish, and he’s quietly fifth in points. A win on Sunday at Dover International Speedway, a track where he’s been victorious twice, is quite plausible. He’s finished second in two of the past three races on the concrete one-mile track, including last fall when he led 102 laps.
“We just need to keep executing as a team like we’ve been doing pretty much every week,” Busch said in a statement. “Dover has been a good place for me. … Hopefully, we can finish off a strong run there this time.”
Neither Hamlin nor Kenseth nor Suarez have demonstrated the same consistency as their teammate, though each has made noticeable gains in recent weeks. This is a reassuring sign considering all three may need to win one of the 14 remaining regular season races to earn postseason eligibility.
“Our speed is better and we still have some work to do, especially with my car, to get it driving better,” Kenseth said. “We still have some work to do, but we do have more speed and that’s encouraging.”
Positivity masked by the furor brought about when the mic was literally dropped.
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