Between his position in the NASCAR Cup Series playoff standings and stage breaks back in the race procedure, Sunday’s agenda has been made easy for Kyle Busch and Richard Childress Racing.
All in for the win.
Busch is 26 points below a transfer spot into the third round of the postseason, and Sunday’s race on the Charlotte road course trims the field from 12 drivers to eight. The two-time series champion sits last on the playoff grid after a crash and 34th-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway and a 25th-place finish a week ago at Talladega Superspeedway.
Unlike the five road course races in the regular season, Sunday sees the return of stage breaks. NASCAR wanted all playoff races officiated under the same rules and didn’t deny the racing could be more competitive.
With stage breaks, it means teams will choose between chasing points in the first two stages or trying to position themselves to win the race. It’s rare to be able to accomplish both.
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“With stage cautions back in the equation, it changes what you have to do; you have to go for the win,” Busch said. “If it wasn’t going to be stage cautions, you could probably go for points and see your strategy still play out normal. But with the cycle, the flip, the leapfrog that you get with the caution that comes out, we have to race for the win.
“We saw last year [Joey] Logano ran for points the first stage, the second stage, and got back in 20th for the last stage and finished deep (18th). It doesn’t work, so it’s not going to be good enough for points for us.”
Busch goes into Sunday (2 p.m. ET, NBC) on the back of finishing of fourth and third at the Roval the last two seasons. Road courses have been strong for Busch and his No. 8 team this year, holding an average finish of 11.8. He finished second at both Circuit of The Americas and Sonoma earlier this season.
“I think as much as the Roval is a wild card, it probably fits the best for us,” Busch said of the elimination race. “It’s better than going to a Martinsville or something where we know that might be ugly. But the road course stuff has been really good, and we’ve tweaked on it and tuned on it a little bit. They had a really good package and baseline to start with, so hopefully it just works well for us.”