Bristol Motor Speedway is Kyle Busch’s best track, and he knows it. And that’s why, statistically, Saturday night’s playoff race is the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver’s best chance to win a race this season.
The defending NASCAR Cup Series champion not only has eight Cup Series wins at the Tennessee short track, but that number also makes him Bristol’s winningest active driver. (Darrell Waltrip is No. 1 all time with 12.)
“It’s just a personal vendetta,” Busch said earlier this month about racing at Bristol in a playoff elimination event. “You go to Bristol, and you’re like, ‘Damn, that’s my track. I’m going to go there, and I’m going to win that thing.'”
Saturday’s Bristol race is the first elimination event in the 10-race playoffs, and a win would guarantee Busch advances to the Round of 12 while probably boosting team morale, as well. Ninth in the playoff standings, he’s not at a high risk for falling below the top-12 cutoff, but a poor performance could quickly change that.
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But a win for Busch and the No. 18 team would also help the 35-year-old driver keep a career-long win streak alive, which he said is even more important to him than winning a third championship.
For the last 15 full-time seasons, Busch has won at least one race and has 56 Cup Series wins. Now in his 16th year, he’s 0-for-28 so far with just eight races remaining.
And his winless run this year is quite a surprise, considering the reigning champion won 18 total races across the previous three seasons, culminating in his second career championship.
“The fact of trying to be able to come out of this year with a victory is certainly high on the list,” Busch said before the playoffs began. “That might be number one on the list actually — even more so than winning the championship just with the way this year has gone.”
In addition to Bristol being Busch’s best track in the Cup Series, it’s also his best track across all three national NASCAR series with 22 total checkered flags. His next highest win total at a single track across all three series is 18 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
At the .533-mile Bristol track, Busch has eight wins in Cup, nine in the second-tier Xfinity Series and five in the third-tier Truck Series. In 2017, he swept all three series races one weekend.
In Bristol’s first 2020 Cup race in May, Busch finished fourth. And, while it was in an exhibition race without the typical format, he also finished second to Chase Elliott in the All-Star Race, which the track hosted in July.
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“Coming into that second round, we struggle at Vegas,” Busch said. “Talladega is an unknown. We struggle at Roval, so that is definitely a round that we look towards as being a possible hiccup.”
But regardless of Busch’s status in the playoffs, there are additional races beyond the Round of 12 where he could win and keep his career-long streak going, particularly at Texas Motor Speedway or at the season finale at Phoenix Raceway — two tracks where he has three Cup wins each.
But looking at the eight tracks left on NASCAR’s 2020 schedule, Bristol is, undeniably, his best shot.
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