Another piece of Kyle Busch’s heart broke away in Pocono last Sunday after he prematurely crashed out of the race. It was his fifth DNF in the last seven races and put him over a hundred points below the playoff elimination line. The Richard Childress Racing driver had little words to tell the press in the aftermath and walked away a downtrodden man seeking the slightest glimmer of light.
Advertisement
For someone who has raced alongside and against him over the past two decades, this sort of attitude from Rowdy is complete newness. Denny Hamlin worried while speaking on ‘Actions Detrimental’ recently said that he has never known Busch to lose the fire within him even when he displayed a softness on the outside. “I don’t know. This is different from what I’ve seen before,” he said.
The mental dip that Busch is undergoing is fueled by the pressure of his worst run in the premier tier. Never has he gone more than 40 races without a win. He has failed to finish 11 of the 57 races that he has started under the Richard Childress Racing banner. That’s a DNF rate of 19%. Such numbers are bound to cast a 2X Cup Series champion into a dark space.
Hamlin, however, refuses to believe that all is lost for his compatriot. He continued, “You’re not going to turn off the competitive juices of someone like Kyle Busch. It just doesn’t turn off. And so, I will not buy into the fact that he is just resigned to this.” His stand is that Busch would still be the fastest driver on the track if only he had a car that would not buckle under his feat.
Pocono’s result makes Busch’s life harder to deal with
Busch opened himself up to the press in Chicago and lamented that he already had a lot to worry about in his life and that every Sunday was just adding to the weight. He underlined that he would keep fighting the good fight despite his problems getting tougher to deal with. A top-10 finish in the Windy City provided some relief but little did it last.
Pocono never fell right for him. Saturday’s practice session was marred by issues in the No. 8 Camaro’s steering. A bigger bullet hit when it began leaking oil on the pit road moments before the race. He started from the rear with little chance of success and the car struggled to find the speed to move ahead as has become its nature. The crash in Lap 121 just cut the wound off clean.
