Sprint Cup Champion Kyle Busch is on a roller-coaster ride at the mid-way point of the 2016 NASCAR season. It hasn’t been the highs and lows that the veteran experienced last year when he missed the first quarter of the campaign rehabbing serious injuries.
In 2015, Busch crashed hard into the inside wall at Daytona in the Xfinity Series’s first event of the season. He sustained a lot of damage to his legs which ultimately threatened his career. The mayhem caused from the crash kept Busch out for a quarter of the Sprint Cup schedule. Busch and his M&M’s team recovered, raced their way back into the playoffs, and won it all in the final showdown of the year.
This year things got off to an astounding start for the Joe Gibbs Racing stand-out. He absolutely dominated in the sixth event of the year at Martinsville Speedway. Busch led 352 of the 500 laps turned around the famed “Paperclip”. He took his first checkered flag of the 2016 season and almost assured himself a birth in the Chase.
The next week, the Sprint Cup Champion made it two wins in a row. Busch jumped out to the lead after the races last re-start and drove on to victory at Texas Motor Speedway. The win cemented his spot in the playoffs and placed him at the top of the NASCAR point standings.
Three weeks later, Busch drove his #18 M&M’s Toyota Camry to the victory lane at Kansas. The victory gave the Sprint Cup Champion three wins on the year. One more than fellow teammate Carl Edwards, Brad Keselowki and six-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson.
Joe Gibbs Racing looked to be as dominate as ever. Don’t forget, JGR’s Denny Hamlin won the Daytona 500 to begin the 2016 season. Carl Edwards, another Joe Gibbs Racing powerhouse, won the following week after Busch’s back to back win at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Edwards didn’t stop there and repeated his winning ways in the Toyota Owners 400 the next weekend. That was six total wins in only 11 races for the Joe Gibbs Racing juggernaut, half of them by it’s defending Sprint Cup champion. Joe Gibbs commented on the success of his team following Kyle Busch’s victory at Kansas Speedway.
“The hardest thing in pro sports is to stay up there every week and right now it’s been a thrill,” Gibbs said after celebrating Busch’s first Sprint Cup win at a track that’s caused him so much trouble. “In a sport where we have so many great teams, so many great owners — it’s so competitive. It’s just so hard to get going, I appreciate how nice it is to reel off several wins like this.”
Since the Sprint Cup Champion drove on to victory at Kansas Speedway, things have went the other direction. The very next week Kyle Busch got caught up on some on track shenanigans and wrecked his hot-rod at Dover International Speedway. He finished 30th after starting in the third qualifying position.
Busch survived the Sprint All-Star Race the next week, finishing in the tenth position. The following week at the same venue, the Sprint Cup Champion was running in the top ten when he bashed into the outside wall with eight laps to go. The savvy veteran was unable to finish the full 400 circuits because of all the damage done to his car and placed 33rd.
The following week at Pocono Raceway, he wrecked his car for a third time. Busch was trying to move into the top ten with 52 laps remaining when he made contact with fellow racer Kasey Kahne. The defending Sprint Cup Champion slid up the track and smashed the right side of his #18 Toyota. He drove his machine straight to the garage and finished in the 31st position. The frustration was evident in his off-track interview following the event.
“There’s nothing you can do to change it around, you’re not going to go to the luck store and buy any,” Busch said. “We had a lot of good fortune go our way at the beginning part of the season, I guess. We still had blown tires that hurt us, but we’re either top-four or we’re bottom four. There is no absolute in between for us.”
