A late-race caution in Saturday night’s preseason Busch Light Clash provided Busch an excellent opportunity to grab the victory from leader Denny Hamlin, but two laps of overtime wasn’t enough time after Hamlin got a good restart.
Hamlin ended up pulling away to start the two-lap overtime and Busch had to fend off Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano before setting his sights back on Hamlin.
“I got a decent restart on the final (restart), and then I got a pretty good (Turns) 1 and 2. He kept having issues off left-front lockup and sliding off the bottom pretty bad, so I knew that was going to open up the door for an opportunity,” said Busch, who has finished in the top three in all three Clash events held at the coliseum.
“I got to his side off of middle of (Turn) 2, but I just never had any acceleration off the corners. I could not get my forward momentum started. So that was kind of my hindrance. As bad as (Hamlin) was on entry, I was as bad on exit.
“If we could have had three, four more laps or whatever, I felt like I would have had enough to be able to get close enough to make a move.”
Busch admitted repeatedly coming close at the Clash event “stings.”
“Second, third, second kind of hurts. I don’t know what it really is. It’s just tight nature, tight bullring kind of stuff, the things we all grow up doing with legends cars, late models, all that,” Busch said.
“Always kind of enjoy getting back to those every once in a while whenever I can. Last year I remember, I went up to New Hampshire and ran a late model race at a big quarter, small three-eighths mile race track and finished second there, too.
“This second stuff sucks.”
Busch’s performance at the L.A. Coliseum has sort of stood out against his Richard Childress Racing team’s struggles in the last year or so on short tracks on the Cup schedule.
While Busch won three times in his first season with RCR last year, his only top-10 finish was a third in the fall Richmond race.
“We’ve got a little bit of work on our short track program,” he said. “Clash seems okay, but we'll try to figure out the rest of the year.”
