Kyle Busch has not fared well in the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season. Exhibit A: Ross Chastain pushed Busch off the course on the penultimate lap of the Toyota/SaveMart 350 at Sonoma Raceway last week.
While Busch finished 12th, he had previously led the race and was in fifth place when Chastain collided with him on the final lap.
Denny Hamlin was the only driver who had a worse day than Busch, as his vehicle blew an engine on lap three, ending his day.
On the most recent edition of “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour,” host Kevin Harvick expressed his support for Busch.
“I’m starting to feel sorry for Kyle Busch because of everything that is happening,” Harvick said. “He wrecked last week with Kyle Larson at St. Louis. Went to Indy for the tire test, crashed. Heard some rumblings that he crashed his rental car. We got there, he ran off the track in practice. Then, he ran off the track at the beginning of the race and then gathers it all up. It’s like, driving along, ‘I’m going to have a good day, finally going to get over this mess’ and then ‘wham,’ Ross Chastain wipes him out and overshoots Turns 4 and spins him out.
“He still finished the race, but he was in contention to have another top-five [finish] and kind of stop the bleeding, but, man, that wound’s still open.”
A week earlier, Busch’s accident with Larson at the Enjoy Illinois 300 ended his day after 139 laps.
Busch is now 15th in the Cup Series in total points (380) this season and has yet to reach victory lane. Furthermore, he has just two top-five finishes, five top-10 finishes and hasn’t finished in the top 10 since the AdventHealth 400 — excluding the All-Star Race.
Busch has 63 career Cup Series wins, which is first among active drivers, and is a two-time Cup Series champion (2015 and 2019). He’s in his second season at Richard Childress Racing after spending the previous 15 seasons at Joe Gibbs Racing and four seasons beforehand — three full time — at Hendrick Motorsports.
Harvick feels that Busch will rebound and be victorious again.
“He’s won a race 19 seasons in a row. He thinks about stuff like that because he’s a winner,” Harvick said of Busch. “He wants to win. He’s so competitive that we see all these mistakes and spinouts and different things happen because he’s pushing extra hard. He is getting everything he can out of that car. It’s in practice; it’s in qualifying; it’s in racing, and that’s just how he’s built. It’s caught up with him a little bit because of the fact that he’s had so many problems, but this one was not of his making.”
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