“Road courses this year were not our strong suit,” Kyle Busch opens up on challenges faced by JGR in 2022 on road courses
Follow Us
Kyle Busch, Christopher Bell and Martin Truex Jr.
Kyle Busch sports the No.18 Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing competing full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series and part-time in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series driving the No.51 Toyota Tundra for his team Kyle Busch Motorsports and the Cup Series team he currently runs for appears to be dominant on short-tracks but not on road courses which have proved tough to beat for the JGR drivers this year along with their sister-team 23X1 Racing.
Kyle Busch himself struggled in both the road course events so far which happen to be the Echopark Automotive Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas and the Toyota Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway which was untameable by the JGR and 23X1 Racing drivers who race for Toyota Racing Development, co-owned by fellow teammate Denny Hamlin and it also drives Kurt Busch, the older brother of Kyle Busch and both the teams have found it difficult to maintain consistency on all tracks.
“We struggled at COTA as well to be honest with raw speed,” Kyle Busch elaborates on problems which led to their poor performance at COTA and Sonoma
Kyle Busch addressed the fact that the team’s drivers have faced many hurdles while racing at Circuit of The Americas and he talked about how they weren’t able to keep up to the leaders and while Busch was running 8th he got spun out by Chase Elliott dropping him further down and he is aware of the fact that Christopher Bell was the only one to be successful with a P3 at COTA and he also added by saying that he had the potential to finish in the top after being good on restarts but in the end, it didn’t work out.
“We struggled at COTA as well to be honest with raw speed and being able to be good there, in the early stage of the race, I think we were running eighth, we were fading, I got spun out by Chase Elliott running 12th, you know what I mean? So, we weren’t great at COTA either, but we were able to get through some of the restarts and get positions on guys to get ourselves upfront. Christopher, I think, was third or fourth. We would have had a shot to run in the top two or three, for sure,” said Kyle Busch.
He further added by talking about how the road courses were not their cup of tea this season and also spoke to teammate Martin Truex Jr. who tested at the upcoming road course at Watkins Glen which didn’t seem to favor them either and he then concluded by speaking about other teams that turned out to be successful at few tracks and not so much at others and ended by saying that there is still a lot left to learn and take-away from the Next-Gen car.
“But I would say both road course events so far this year were not our strong suit. But talking to Martin Truex, who tested for us at Watkins Glen International, certainly not looking forward to going to The Glen either. They weren’t very fast there, a little bit. I would argue, too, that the Team Penske guys weren’t great at Kansas, they’ve been super strong at the flatter tracks, you know, it is kind of patchy right now with just getting an understanding built around this car,” concluded Kyle Busch.
With Kyle Busch and his team facing complications at the road courses, will they succeed in tackling their problems in the upcoming road course events?
Stay Updated!
Sai Karteek Kompally
(240 Articles Published)