Kyle Busch Recovers to Finish Sixth on ‘No Fun’ Day in Atlanta

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

Kyle Busch may not have been having any fun in Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, but the Joe Gibbs Racing driver sure did make a show out of his misfortunes on the 1.5-mile track.

A day after crashing his primary car in final Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice, Busch would have to start the 334-lap event at the back of the field in a car that he had yet to turn a lap in.

Despite the setback, Busch made the most of his situation, carving his way through the field and climbing as high as second on lap 193. However, his climb up the leaderboard came at a cost when Busch scrapped the wall in Turns 1-2, causing a damage to his Camry and a flat tire in the process.

On lap 223, the debris from Busch’s flat right-rear tire brought out the yellow, saving him from going laps down as he limped his way to pit road.

Starting at the back of the pack for a second time, Busch once again started his march back toward the front, eventually settling in for a sixth-place finish on the day.

“I got in the fence just a little bit in the center of (turns) 1 and 2,” Busch said. “Just touched it and then kind of smelled some smoke and never saw any and thought we’d be okay. Overall, it just must have rubbed it and cut it down. Fortunately, we got a caution there. Caught us a break and was able to get tires on the thing and pull it back out and go back after them.

“What a hell of a weekend for all of our guys on this Creamy Snickers Camry, it was just evil tight all day long. We just couldn’t get the tight out of it. We were battling and running the wall all day long and that’s where I needed to be in order to make up any time. Doing that, you run close to the fence and you run into opportunities to get yourself in trouble.

“On the Cup side, we just had no fun this weekend, so it was really unfortunate for us. Guys worked hard and persevered and we battled through and took probably a 16th, 14th-place finish in our Camry and ended up sixth with it, so not too bad I guess.”

Next week, Busch will head home to Las Vegas Motor Speedway and try to put the issues that plagued his 500^th career Cup Series start behind him.