Kyle Busch would have liked a little more with his No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet in Sunday’s race at Sonoma Raceway but a second-place finish was the best result behind the dominant Martin Truex Jr.
“I tried really hard at the end to at least try to keep Martin honest,” Busch said. “Felt like I could beat him a little bit on a lap, then I would mess up. He would beat me by a little bit more on the next lap. We were just kind of trading a little bit there. He was able to pull away there late.”
Busch moved to second as Truex took the lead with 14 laps to go in the Toyota/Save Mart 350. But Busch was never able to mount a serious challenge on Truex for the victory.
“Great job by all the guys on this Mclaren Grills Camaro; just proud of the effort,” said Busch. “We gave it everything that we had. We made a lot of changes. We got a lucky break there with a yellow with only three laps on tires, so we were able to kind of cycle to the front.
“Once we got up there, we could maintain pace with some of the good cars and have a good top three speed race car. Just kind of flip-flopped the race a little bit. Good fortunes for us. Nice to come out here with a P2 after a win last week.”
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Busch won the second stage of Sunday’s race and led 33 laps. The result is Busch’s seventh top-10 finish in the last eight Sonoma races.
On the season, Busch went to Sonoma off his third victory in the Cup Series. He’s finished no worse than seventh in the last four races.
“I don’t know if I want an off week. Let’s go, right?” Busch said. “We’re rolling right now. It would be a good break for everybody to kind of regroup and refocus and set in for the last 18 in a row.
“All in all, just real proud of the guys and the communication and the way they’re able to go to work and kind of work through some of our issues and try to improve on what I need to be able to feel in a race car to be able to put out finishes like that. If we can keep doing those things, we’ll be a force.”