Still Winless in ’17, Busch Looks for Repeat Success at Kansas

By David Morgan, NASCAR Editor

A week after lamenting that he was ready to get back to a “real racetrack”, Kyle Busch heads to Kansas Speedway this weekend and will be looking for a repeat of last year’s Go Bowling 400, where he was able to finally breakthrough for his first win on the 1.5 mile intermediate track.

So far in 2017, Busch and Joe Gibbs Racing as a whole remain winless, but Kansas could be just what the doctor ordered for the No. 18 team. Though Busch struggled at the track for nearly a decade into his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series career with just two top-10 finishes in his first 14 starts, the team has turned the tables in the last three years, not finishing worse than fifth in his last four starts, along with his win in this race one year ago.

“It’s always good to come here in Kansas,” said Busch. “You know the crowd, the reception, the race track, the community has really built up around the race track here over the last 10 – 10 years or so. It’s been a lot of fun to see all that happen and I’m looking forward to the race. It’s been a great race track for us lately. We’ve had some good runs here the last few times. We’ve kind of seemed to maybe have figured out this place a little bit better. And you know looking forward to the opportunity of being able to go out here and hopefully get ourselves with our M&M’s Camry in victory lane and to do what we did last year.”

“We’ve seem to have gotten a setup or a hold of this place I’d say and hopefully we don’t screw that up this time around and we can continue our strong runs and our fast pace of being able to have a shot to win.”

Despite not yet finding his way to victory lane, Busch noted that his team could easily have had multiple wins by this point in the season, but for one reason or another, the wins have just not fallen his way.

“It’s just circumstances just didn’t lend themselves to us,” said Busch. “We just weren’t in the right place at the right time I guess. I thought we were. Circumstances just kind of don’t go your way and you don’t win these things sometimes. Overall though, we’ve probably legitimately had a shot to have won at least five races this year in my mind. We’ve been in position or have had an opportunity to win five different times this year and we just haven’t been able to close the deal. That’s the most frustrating part for us is we just haven’t been able to get to victory lane yet, but we know we’re on the brink of it. We know we have fast cars. We know we’re up front and we just got to put it all together.”

Whether or not Busch can continue his Kansas streak and score a win for the first time this season will all be decided on Saturday night, with 400 miles and 267 laps to tell the tale.