Denny Hamlin: 'Kyle Busch is better than his results are showing'

With each passing week, Kyle Busch’s path to getting into the Cup Series playoffs gets more complicated.

Of course, the easiest way for Busch to clinch his spot in the Field of 16 would be to get to Victory Lane but as of right now, Victory Lane feels far, far away for the two-time Cup Series champion. That’s not to say Busch hasn’t had a fast racecar at times, but luck certainly hasn’t been on his side. During Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway, it was a mechanical issue which ended his run early and led to his second DNF of the season. Already below the playoff cut line entering the race, Busch now sits 31 points behind Bubba Wallace for the 16th and final playoff spot.

Despite his shortcomings this season, his former Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, Denny Hamlin, believes Busch is much better than what the results are showing, he said on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast.

“They are on a slide right now for sure,” Hamlin said. “I don’t know where he was running; I saw on social media that they thought it was a top-five car. I didn’t see him most of the day because of where I was running, so I can’t really speak to that. But certainly, Kyle Busch is better than his results are showing right now, and the team itself is better than the results that they’re showing.

“Some of the luck — I hate the word luck in racing because you do make your luck most times. If you get caught up in a wreck running 15th, well you shouldn’t have been running 15th because that’s where the wrecks usually start. So, luck is an overused word but certainly they’ve had some misfortunes. Some of that was on them and others it just happened.”

Kyle Busch’s win streak in serious jeopardy?

With his P35 finish at Iowa, Busch has now finished outside the top-10 in five consecutive races. Busch, after winning three races in his first 15 starts last season, is riding a 38-race losing streak, the longest of his career. He’s in jeopardy of failing to score a regular season win for the first time since 2004.

A clearly frustrated Busch did his best to describe what went wrong at Iowa.

“I don’t know what happened, but Next Gen parts and pieces broke,” Busch said. ‘Something in the left-rear suspension. I don’t know if it was a toe link or what it was. But it changed the skew of the back of the car and it was just undrivable doing that. We came in and fixed it. Rolling back out, we broke the belt. I have no idea, but frustrating, for sure. Not what we wanted for all of our No. 8 Zone Chevy guys, everybody from Kwik Star. We were having a pretty decent day. I thought we had a top-10 run going. We had an opportunity there to score some points, but it wasn’t meant to be.”