Kyle Busch eyes Bristol sweep after winning Xfinity, Truck Series races

Kyle Busch finds himself in a familiar position entering the Monster Energy Cup Series race Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway: A win in the Bass Pro Shops/NRA Night Race would give him his second three-race NASCAR national touring sweep on the Tennessee half-mile track.

Busch won the Camping World Truck Series race Wednesday night, then followed by winning the Xfinity Series race Friday night. He previously completed the Bristol sweep in 2010, and had another chance to do so in 2013 but finished 11th in the Cup race.

“Hopefully we can close it out,” Busch said after winning Friday. “I think we can. We’ve got a fast car.”

The hardest leg to cap the sweep is obviously the Cup main event, which doesn’t afford Busch much slack to overcome mistakes like he committed in the Xfinity and Truck Series races.

On Wednesday and again Friday night, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver was penalized for speeding on pit road, necessitating he fall to the rear. Both times, Busch quickly charged back to the front where he reestablished himself as the dominant figure. It will be significantly harder to pull off such a comeback Saturday night with bigger fields and a deeper talent pool.

“We’re already going to back our tack (that gauges speed) down for tomorrow, so we won’t have the speeding penalty,” Busch said. “We’ll just give up on the rest of pit road in order to not get caught on that section.”

Busch didn’t qualify as well as expected, a surprise considering he posted the top speed in the first round of qualifying. But he struggled in the subsequent session and failed to advance to the third round, recording the 18th-fastest time. The falloff baffled Busch and crew chief Adam Stevens.

“We had a really fast car first round in qualifying and then we lost four-tenths of a second [a lap],” Busch said. “I don’t know what happened or where that went. Adam and I are trying to figure that out. You know our heads are in the books and in the computer trying to find it and we just don’t see it, so hopefully our race setup is pretty good.”

Odds favor Busch and Stevens finding a solution allowing Busch, whose five Bristol wins is tied with older brother Kurt Busch for most among active drivers, to emerge as a contender Saturday night.

Although Kyle Busch has finished 29th or worse in five of the past six Bristol races, this underscores just how competitive he’s actually been. He’s led 73 or more laps three times during that span and never qualified worse than seventh.

And Busch is quick to point out that often when he wins at Bristol, he typically doesn’t qualify well. When he became the first driver to win Cup, Xfinity and Truck races in a single weekend in 2010, he started 19th in the Cup race but still led 378 of the 500 laps.

“Every time that I’ve won here or have run real well here, I’ve always qualified poorly, so we’ve got that going for us,” Busch said. “We’re ready to rock and roll.”