KYLE BUSCH Road-Course Ringer
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KYLE BUSCH Road-Course Ringer HUNTERSVILLE, North Carolina (July 30, 2019) – Back in the early to mid 2000s, the term “road-course ringer” used to be a common one when the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series headed to any one of the two true road-course races on the schedule – the June race at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway and the August event at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International. Road-course specialists like Boris Said, Ron Fellows, and Scott Pruett regularly entered the Cup Series races at Sonoma and Watkins Glen, taking on NASCAR full-time drivers who also showed plenty of skill going left and right. While the road-course ringers ran up front with regularity, the full-time drivers still brought home the majority of the victories, with Jeff Gordon’s nine road-course wins leading the way, just ahead of Tony Stewart’s eight wins. And drivers including Ricky Rudd, Mark Martin, and Rusty Wallace regularly showed a penchant for navigating the road circuits to perfection. Going back even further, the original road course ringer was open-wheel ace Dan Gurney, who won four consecutive NASCAR races at now-defunct Riverside (Calif.) Raceway, including the 1964 event in which he lapped the field. Today, three active drivers have multiple road-course wins – Kyle Busch with four, Martin Truex Jr., with three, all at Sonoma, and Kevin Harvick with two. Busch, driver of the No. 18 M&M’S Hazelnut Spread Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), heads to Watkins Glen in Upstate New York for the second and final true road-course race of the NASCAR Cup Series season aiming for his fifth win of the season. If the 2015 Cup Series champion was to grab another victory in Sunday’s GoBowling at The Glen, he could also join some elite company as a road- racing ace in NASCAR’s top series. The M&M’S Hazelnut Spread driver’s four road-course wins ties him with retired drivers David Pearson and Mark Martin. That’s some pretty good company, already. But with a fifth road-course win, Busch could tie Darrell Waltrip, Tim Richmond and Gurney on the road-course win list at five. There is a bit of distance to the top two spots on the all-time road-course wins list, of course, when it comes to catching the aforementioned Gordon and Stewart’s nine and eight road-course wins, respectively. Busch scored his fourth career Cup Series road-course win in June 2015 at Sonoma, and he heads to Watkins Glen with an impressive 12 top-10 finishes in his 14 career starts at The Glen, which includes two victories. Add an average finish of 9.4, along with his 247 laps led, and Busch’s record is quite dazzling at the site of Sunday’s race. After his inaugural Cup Series victory at The Glen in 2008, he nearly won for the second time on the 2.45-mile, 11-turn circuit in his 2011 and 2012 visits there before breaking through again in 2013 with another victory in New York’s scenic Finger Lakes region. A third Watkins Glen victory Sunday would continue to solidify Busch and the M&M’S Hazelnut Spread team as a favorite each time the series comes to town. So as Busch prepares for some road racing this weekend, he would like to accomplish a few things – including another tally in the win column for the M&M’S Hazlenut Spread flavor while also adding to the record books as one of NASCAR’s best road-course racers and continuing his climb up the all-time overall win list. KYLE BUSCH, Driver of the No. 18 M&M’S Hazelnut Spread Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing: You’ve had some success at Watkins Glen. What makes Watkins Glen challenging, and why is it so much different than racing at Sonoma? “I like going to Watkins Glen. It’s a road course, but it’s kind of a high-speed road course. The difference in the two road courses, you think of Sonoma as like a Martinsville-type road course and you would think of Watkins Glen like a 2-mile oval, like a California- or Michigan- type road course. Watkins Glen has some speed and has some wide-open spaces a little bit, but there is still a lot of great racing that happens there since you are able to out-brake people getting into the corners, or having a better run through the bus stop, or maybe getting by someone in the Carousel. It’s a fun place to race. I really like Watkins Glen and I hope we can have another solid run there with our M&M’S Hazelnut Spread Camry.” -more- Kyle Busch – M&M’S Hazelnut Spread Watkins Glen Advance Page Two What are your expectations for Watkins Glen this weekend? “Watkins Glen has obviously been a really good place for me over the years and a place I really enjoy. We’ve just got to keep coming to the track and executing like we have. There are a lot of factors in strategy that affect a road-course race and hope we can execute like we have been and get another win. Certainly, the bonus points from that and trying to win the regular-season championship could be a big deal in the playoffs.” What is the most fun part of a lap at Watkins Glen? “To me, going through turn one and up through the esses is pretty cool and a lot of fun. It’s challenging, yet a lot of fun. As you come down the front straightaway, it’s a downhill braking zone, so you feel like you don’t have to brake as soon as you need to, but you need to in order to get slowed down for turn one. You try to stay out and get a good, hard cut to the right for turn one and accelerate out of there as quickly as you can to get set up for the esses. (You) stay wide on the left and then turn into the right-hander in (turn) two – smooth. You’re getting out of the gas but not using too much brake, just rolling off in there. As the car gets in there and loads, it actually takes a really big set because that’s when you start going back uphill. So the car will load up and that’s when you get back in the gas really wide open. And then you have to turn back to the left and be able to roll back out of it just enough to make the car bend. And then you’re back wide open again to the right-side guardrail and just keeping it tight through the right-hander that we call turn five.” What is the most challenging part of a lap at Watkins Glen? “I’d say the most challenging thing is the culmination of the Inner Loop and the Carousel. All of that together is a lot harder to figure out how to make speed through there than just going through there traditionally. That’s an area of the racetrack a lot of guys really try to abuse. They’ll get off on the right side, get off on the left side and throw dirt up on the racetrack and then it just makes for a real mess.” What does it take to be successful at Watkins Glen? “At Watkins Glen, the biggest thing is pit strategy. Obviously, you’ve got to pick and choose when you’re going to pit and stick to your plan. Whether or not we can still do it on two stops I’m unsure of because Sonoma turned into a three-stop race for us all because the new fuel mileage is a little bit off from where we were last year. At Watkins Glen, though, you definitely have to be good at being able to carry speed, obviously, through the esses and down the long backstretch. That seems to be the key part of the racetrack.” -TSC- Contact Bill Janitz with True Speed Communication (704) 875-3388 ext. 803 or [email protected] www.TrueSpeedCommunication.com ● Online Media Kit Available at: www.TrueSpeedMedia.com .