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Kyle Busch has 'no clue' how he will perform in NASCAR Playoffs Round of 12

JHby:Jonathan Howard09/23/23

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Kyle Busch Cheddars
Mandatory Credit: Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports

With nothing but struggles in the last six weeks or so, Kyle Busch is still in the NASCAR Playoffs, but he isn’t sure how he’ll perform moving forward. The second round of the playoffs is designed to test these drivers and to be a wild card round.

Between Texas, Talladega, and the Roval – there are two races that can sink your playoff hopes. Kyle Busch knows that he can be eliminated with one bad race.

Asked by Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports what he thought of his chances in this round, Busch was honest. He doesn’t know.

“Realistically I mean, I have no clue. I have high confidence here just based off of how the 8 car was last year, how the 24 car was here last year. So, we based most of our stuff off of that. Just kind of jump in and go and hopefully it’s good and it’s fast and it’s where we need it to be. Then, Talladega it’s a crapshoot, it’s luck. Go read my postrace presser I can’t tell you how many times I said we probably just got lucky today.

“The Roval, yeah I mean last year I ran third there and there was a tire strategy at the end there, we took tires we were able to make it work for us. I feel like our road course program has been strong, our results at Watkins Glen weren’t indicative of that because of coming to pit road, the light turning on, having to go back out, cycling to the back not being able to pass as well as you want to come back up through. Lots of stuff. I would like to think that normal races and normal circumstances, we can make it through this round.”

Kyle Busch qualifies P7 for Texas playoff race

Those comments were from before qualifying. Now that the Cup Series has hit the track and run some fast laps, we have the starting order. Bubba Wallace is set to start on the pole after a blazing-fast lap of 29.672 seconds. As for Busch, he starts P7 on Sunday.

This is the best starting position that Kyle Busch has had since Indianapolis, folks. The last 1.5-mile track Busch qualified in the top-10 at was Michigan. It’s been a long time for the 8 team to put a good car together right off the truck.

Busch has just one top-10 finish in the playoffs this season. He was able to salvage his Darlington race with a P11 finish and was P7 at Kansas. Bristol was just not his night and it was a long 500 laps for him last week. He’s ready to race for a win this week, though.

I think that RCR and Kyle Busch have to feel good right now. Qualifying went really well and now they have to just execute for 400 miles on Sunday. Easier said than done, but a lot easier than trying to work your way up from P20.