DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Kyle Busch hasn’t yet won a Daytona 500 — and the all-time great NASCAR driver provided a colorful explanation as to why.
The two-time Cup Series champion, when prompted by a question from a reporter in the Daytona International Speedway media center on Wednesday, said that determining a winner for “NASCAR’s Super Bowl” is “definitely circumstantial” based on today’s style of racing.
“I think the whole thing kind of changed, I don’t know, 2012-13ish, when it just became a complete disaster and a total wreck-fest at the end,” Busch said. “Before that, I felt like there were times when there were some good races, some good racing. You had to have a fast car. You had to have a good-handling car. You know, you had to put yourself at the right spot at times. It was a bit of a chess match.”
He then chuckled, acknowledging that his former teammate and three-time Daytona 500-winner Denny Hamlin might rebuke that claim.
“But I’m sure Denny can come in here and say, ‘No, I’ve won three of them in that time frame, and that’s not luck, you know?’ ” Busch said. “So he’s just been fortunate at being in the right place at the right time, making the right moves.”
He added: “It’s obviously a difficult race to win. There’s a lot of different winners. Some guys, this is the only race they ever win. Other guys, they win it two, three times over again. It’s just the Super Bowl of our sport. It’s hard to accomplish this one. It’s a race where you rely a lot more on different factors than you do just yourself.”
Busch has a point: The 2022 Daytona 500 saw a three-car wreck with five laps left. The 2021 Great American Race saw Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski collect on the final lap and let Michael McDowell scoot free to Victory Lane. The 2020 race saw Hamlin win after a second restart in overtime. And so on.
At the same time, calling it a function of the era isn’t perfect, either: Dale Earnhardt only won one Daytona 500 in his storied career — and it came on his 20th try.
“I have not watched the last 10 years in a row of footage,” Busch said. “But I’m gonna guarantee you (on Sunday) that there are not very many cars finishing, and there are a lot of wrecks happening, especially on last-lap crashes.”
Could Kyle Busch win the Daytona 500 this year?
Winning a Daytona 500 is really the last thing on Busch’s career bucket list.
He has won 60 NASCAR Cup Series races — tied with Kevin Harvick for ninth-most all-time — and has been successful at every level of NASCAR. He finished second at the Daytona 500 in 2019 and sixth in 2022.
Could 2023 be the one?
Busch appears at home at Richard Childress Racing, the team that he signed with in September after free-agency drama clouded his last few months at Joe Gibbs Racing. The 37-year-old veteran drove the No. 8 car to a third-place finish at the Clash in Los Angeles earlier this month.
His teammate, Austin Dillon (who kickstarted talks between team owner Richard Childress and Busch), told reporters on Wednesday that Busch looks rejuvenated — which is only good news for RCR.
“I feel like this year with Kyle, I feel like he’s established so much and for me, I’m establishing and creating that establishment as a pretty solid driver in the sport,” Dillon said. “More than anything, I want to improve on what we did last year. We both made the playoffs last year. Kyle, obviously, made the playoffs, but how do we take RCR to the next level? That’s consistently getting multiple wins, and multiple wins is what it takes to win a championship. You’ve got to win more than once. So for me, that’s the goal.”
Other Kyle Busch updates
—Busch said that his brother, Kurt, has been quite busy working with 23XI Racing after retiring from full-time Cup Series racing at the end of the last season. It’s still a bit strange to Kyle, he said: “When I saw the layouts for my cars this year that just had ‘Busch’ on there, I said, ‘Hey you guys forgot my first name.’ There’s not another (Busch) out there, so we don’t have to run the first name anymore.”
— Busch largely shut down questioning about his arrest in Mexico last month, when a handgun was discovered in his luggage as his family prepared to return from a vacation to the United States. When asked about the incident, Busch — who said he has a valid concealed carry permit from his local authority — said the statement he released on Twitter was all he had to say on the matter.
