Kyle Busch seeks record third Brickyard 400 win in a row

Although winless on the season, Kyle Busch enters the weekend in good position to win the Brickyard 400 for a third straight year.

If Kyle Busch were to win Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, it would give him three consecutive Brickyard 400 victories. Quite an achievement, something not even not esteemed Indianapolis aces Jeff Gordon (five wins) and Jimmie Johnson (four) have been able to accomplish on the fabled track where NASCAR’s premier division has raced for nearly a quarter century.

A victory Sunday would also give Busch another reason to celebrate: It would be his first in 20 races during the 2017 season and first since he won last July at Indianapolis. That’s a career-worst 35-race winless streak, an eternity for someone who admits he doesn’t handle losing well and has been known to let his emotions get the best of him when facing defeat.

“It’s pretty cool to come in here thinking that we have a chance to go for three in a row,” Busch said Friday at Indianapolis. “And, it’s ultimately frustrating in the same breath that it’s been 365 days since we’ve won one of these things.”

How Busch enters Indianapolis this year is a vastly differently position than how he did so 12 months ago. Then, Busch already had three wins to his credit, with Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth combining for five wins and the Toyota-backed organization clearly establishing itself as the benchmark other teams were trying to catch.

But until Hamlin won last Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, JGR was winless in 2017. A redesigned Toyota front nose and an altered aerodynamic rules package NASCAR implemented over the offseason were the main factors contributed to the dry spell -- at least by JGR’s lofty standards.

The fact he hasn’t won in a full year isn’t lost on Busch, whose 38 Cup wins is second only to Johnson’s 83. But instead of dwelling on what hasn’t happened over the past year, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver prefers to focus on the positives. Sure he may be winless, but Busch quickly emphasizes that’s in amidst of a fine season. He’s led the second-most laps, accumulated the third-most points and has tallied the fourth-best average finish.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve struggled,” Busch said. “We’ve led plenty of laps this year. We’ve been in plenty of positions to win. We don’t have the win numbers to show for that.”

On the year, only Martin Truex Jr., who’s won three times and leads the standings, and Kyle Larson, who’s won twice and is second in the standings, have been consistently better. And even without a win, Busch is a near lock to be among the 16 drivers who will qualify for the Cup Series playoffs.

“(Truex) and (Larson) have been really, really good,” Busch said. “I feel like we’ve been right there with them, but maybe a tick behind. Maybe we’ve been the third-best car every single week, so we haven’t been the guy.”

And it’s not as if Busch hasn’t had chances to break his slump this season. Team owner Joe Gibbs thinks Busch could’ve won “maybe eight times” had circumstances played out differently. An assertion backed up by Busch having led with less than 10 laps remaining three times this season. He’s also led 100 or more laps four times. And he led 95 laps at New Hampshire and would’ve been in contention for the win were it not for a pair of self-inflicted speeding penalties on pit road.

“Every single week it just seems to be something else that kind of bites us,” Busch said. “It’s not the same thing over and over again that we’ve got to fix, so it’s just little things here or there that keep kind of working against us.”

If there’s an ideal track for Busch to break through, Indianapolis would seemingly be that place. He led 149 of a possible 170 laps in winning last year, and only twice has he finished outside the top 10 in 12 career starts.

“We’ve been really good here the last couple of years and being able to score the wins in the Brickyard 400 has been extra special,” Busch said. “It’s really cool to be able to come here every late July and have the opportunity to race around the Brickyard and with the amount of heritage and prestige of racing that’s here, it’s pretty special.

“Certainly like to think that I’m good enough, my team is good enough, Toyota, Joe Gibbs Racing, all of us we can go out there and score another win here and make it three in a row and do something that’s been unprecedented in the NASCAR ranks here.”