The end result on Sunday at Richmond Raceway might have been a top five, but the struggles were still there for Kyle Busch and the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing team.
“All of our issues that we’ve had this year on the short track stuff was just way greater than our issues today,” Busch said after finishing third in the Cook Out 400. “We helped our issues a lot, but we still fought a lot of the same comments. So, just less severity (today).”
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It was still the best performance Busch has had with the short-track package, which has been the Achilles’ heel for the team. Busch qualified second, just as he did in the spring, but after getting through a rough first stage, ran much better throughout the afternoon.
“Probably just started the race too high on air,” Busch said of falling back early in the race. “You’re always kind of a little wishy-washy on where to start the race with air pressures, and we’ve been too low a lot of times on the short tracks this year, so now we were too high.
“So, it seems to be a finicky piece of our battle that we’ve been fighting. But just a great day with good pit stops and good adjustments to keep ourselves in the top five, in the hunt.”
Busch was running sixth at the end of the second stage. When the final caution flew with 10 laps to go, Busch was running fourth. Although he came off pit road in third place, Busch chose the outside lane, in the second row, for the restart, which again put him fourth in the fight to the finish.
“Proud of the effort,” Busch said. “Proud of the reset there on the short track stuff that was a good race for us. I love coming to Richmond, obviously, and wish we had a little bit more there. We were inching up on them there that last run just a little bit, but I don’t know if we would have got there. Third was about what we were going to get.”
Of the five short-track races, Busch has finished inside the top 10 at Phoenix (eighth) and Richmond (third). But he’s only led one lap in those races, and Busch isn’t sure if what the team clicked on at Richmond can be carried forward in their setups in future short-track races.
“I would like to think so, I’m not sure,” Bush said. “With only Martinsville and Phoenix kind of left, I think this was a good baseline for Phoenix. A lot of guys have always talked about if you run good at Phoenix, you run good here (and) vice versa.
“So, maybe that’ll help us. But we’ve got to be in the final four before we get there.”