It wasn’t the primal, guttural scream one would expect to hear from someone who had just snapped a career-long winless streak spanning a full year. The response was more subdued; more akin to someone still trying to grasp that what he was experiencing was in fact real.
NASCAR at Pocono recap: Kyle Busch returns to Victory Lane, snaps career-long winless streak
Before Sunday at Pocono, Kyle Busch had gone 36 races and a full year since his last Cup Series victory.
“Finally, eh,” Kyle Busch radioed to his team immediately after winning Sunday at Pocono Raceway.
The muted reaction came from a driver in disbelief amid a season where circumstances had repeatedly worked against him; from a driver who when in position to win had committed self-inflicted mistakes. From inopportune cautions to pit road penalties, from strategy calls that backfired to being in the wrong place at the wrong, Busch experienced a litany of reasons why he hadn’t won at Indianapolis Motor Speedway since July 2016.
“I didn’t really know if it was over yet, I guess,” Busch said in the winner’s press conference. “I was just waiting for that moment. Something was going to happen.”
Such a regular visitor to Victory Lane is Busch that his 36-race stretch between wins became a predominant storyline with each passing week in which the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing team didn’t pick up a checkered flag. Seemingly something had to be amiss. How else to explain the drought for the driver whose winning percentage ranks second only to Jimmie Johnson among active participants.
Reality doesn’t always match perception, however. Although Busch may not have been winning due to assorted factors, his performance has been in line with his customary high levels. On the year, he ranks first in poles, second in laps led, tied for third in top-five finishes, and fifth in average finish.
“We’ve had speed,” Busch said. “We’ve been right there, we’ve been able to do what we should be doing. That’s running up front. It’s just been a bit frustrating on the finishing side.
“We’ve certainly figured out a lot of different ways to lose those races this year.”
Still, the zero in the win column remained, representing an omnipresent reminder of a team that hadn’t been able to execute when it mattered most. And for a driver of Busch’s stature, that’s unacceptable — frustration further compounded by his notorious inability to handle defeat with grace.
Before Sunday, Busch had led three times this season with less than 10 laps remaining but hadn’t been able to close out. Then there was a week ago at Indianapolis, the site of his last Cup victory, when he clearly had the superior car before a bobble by quasi-teammate Martin Truex Jr. on a restart sent both crashing and turned the No. 18 Toyota into a mangled mess destined for the scrapheap.
Further scrutiny came when JGR announced mid-week it had suspended two of Truex’s crew members, which JGR employs and supplies to Furniture Row Racing, three races for a confrontation with Busch’s crew chief, Adam Steven, immediately following the accident. Once again, the No. 18 team was in the news for all the wrong reasons.
And yet, Busch is too good for his team to not think that eventually things would unfold in its favor. It was only a matter of when and where that first victory of 2017 would occur.
All that changed Sunday, when Busch led a race-high 74 of a possible 160 laps and won by a hefty six-second margin over second-place Kevin Harvick.
“There was no battle,” Harvick said. “He was in a league of his own there at the end.”
With a win, the outlook for the No. 18 team changes for the balance of the regular season. Because of his points accumulation, Busch was a near-lock to qualify for the playoffs. But minus a win, the possibility existed that he could be bumped out had a rash of season-first winners prevailed in the five races left before the postseason begins.
Now the focus is on fine-tuning for the playoffs and finding ways to reduce the playoff bonus points advantage Truex has amassed thanks to his 14 stage wins and three race wins, which might be enough of a buffer to ensure advancement at least to the eight-driver semifinal round.
A couple of more wins over the next five races, and Busch could place himself in a similar advantageous position, a distinct possibility considering how well the No. 18 has executed as of late — four consecutive races where Busch has led 74 or more laps.
“Our stats, and our runs, and our speed shows for itself,” Busch said. “Those guys have just been able to capitalize on race victories. That’s what we haven’t been able to capitalize on.
“We just methodically go about our races; that’s our mentality. When it works for us, we go to Victory Lane. That’s how we get to the [championship round].”
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