Kyle Busch has history on his side for Bristol Cup race

Kyle Busch has history on his side for Bristol Cup race
Jim Pedley


If the old sports adage of “certain horses for certain courses” can be accurately applied to NASCAR, then Kyle Busch is Secretariat when it comes to Bristol Motor Speedway.
He has been dominating at BMS the past couple years, and fans who want to impress friends and family by correctly picking the winner of Sunday’s Jeff Byrd 500 Sprint Cup race should proceed directly to the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota of Busch.
“I’m not exactly sure what makes me so good at Bristol,” said Busch, who has won three of the last four Cup races at the track. “I’ve just had a lot of success there.”
History-making success.
It was on the high banks of .533-mile Bristol last August that Busch became the first driver to win the NASCAR triple crown—Camping World Truck Series, Nationwide Series and Sprint Cup races in the same week.
His victory in the Cup race that weekend was his fourth in 12 attempts at BMS. His average finish of 9.3 is easily the best among active drivers, and with a victory there Sunday, he would tie brother Kurt Busch and Jeff Gordon as top active winners at the track.
Busch, who also has three Camping World Truck Series and two Nationwide Series wins at Bristol, thinks
keys to his current success at the track can be traced to his past.
“We grew up at the (Las Vegas Motor Speedway) Bullring and stuff like that,” Busch said. “Maybe not as banked as Bristol is, but I love going and racing at Winchester (Ind.), Slinger (Wis.), and Salem (Ind.), where I’ve raced before. Those are all really high-banked racetracks that are a half-mile in distance, or a quarter. They’re really fun to race around, and you kind of get a great feel for racing in a bowl.
“You go down the straightaway and you slam it into the corners and you mash the gas and you kind of sling right back out of the corners. It’s a lot of fun to do that. It’s kind of an art. Some guys are really good at it, and some find a knack that makes them really good at it and make it seem easy.”
Busch, a bit of a showman, also says the mass of fans and their closeness to the track, both of which help make Bristol unique, have helped push him to success there.
“Bristol Motor Speedway is one of the best racetracks on the circuit,” Busch said. “All the fans love it because of the excitement, the run-ins, and the close-quarter action with all the cars being packed on top of one another at a half-mile racetrack with us 43 lunatics running around in a tight circle. With the fans, the atmosphere there always makes for a good time.”
What fans and some drivers do not like about BMS is the new concrete surface that was installed in 2007.
Busch loves the new surface, which is not surprising because three of his Cup victories have come on the newer, smoother track.
“Bristol used to be a track where you could charge the corners a little bit and get it right in and down to the bottom of the track,” he said. “You kind of would go through the middle of the corner and then slingshot out on the exits. And now it’s just so smooth that you’re easy in, you’re kind of easy through the center, and easy off.
“The track is a little slower than I think it was because they reduced some banking in order to put sort of the progressive banking into it to make the outside groove better for the fans.”
Few will be surprised if Busch gallops away at BMS on Sunday.