What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but Kyle Busch thought his chances to win on Sunday at Pocono Raceway were killed the moment his transmission slipped during the opening laps.
It was lap five, coming to the restart when Busch started to scrub his tires and the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 slipped out of gear, sounding several alarms for crew chief Ben Beshore and spotter Tony Hirschman.
“I was like, okay, that was weird,” Busch said. “I put it in third; third was fine. Put it back in second; second was fine. Put it in fourth, and it popped out again. So, I was like, ‘Well, damn. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to run around here the rest of the day and hold this in.’ It took some brute force to hold it back in.”
Eventually, Busch held the shifter in place so long that it became stuck in fourth gear, and now his entire race was certainly in doubt.
“It won’t wiggle, won’t move, nothing,” Busch added. “I was like, ‘okay’ and they were like, ‘come down pit road.'”
Well sure, but how do you come down pit road in fourth gear without speeding without having the tachometer set a situation no one would ever conceive of preparing for?
“They said, ‘all right, do 2500,’ and I don’t even have a readout that says 2500,” Busch said. “There’s a bar graph basically. It just floats with a green light on how much rpms you have. I watched that as close as I could. Tried not to speed.
“Kyle (Larson) was pushing me (and) he was behind me on that one. I was holding him up a little bit, but I didn’t want to speed. That was it. The rest of the day it was locked in.”
Of course, that presented problems the rest of the day too, as Busch would stall the car every time it came down pit road and then would have to time his restarts to where he would be at speed just as the field took the green flag.
Otherwise, he would absolutely get killed on restarts, just like he thought his race winning chances were killed by that point.
“When we left pit road, that was it, like the clutch was gone,” Busch said. “There was no more. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to make it down pit road again and be able to leave with just my guys behind me pushing me.
“Even when I left the last time, it was smoking. I don’t know what was smoking, but probably the clutch because the clutch was fried. It was smoking.”
Much like in Saturday’s race, won by Alex Bowman but equally lost by Kyle Larson, fortune takes away but sometimes gives back too.
The final caution from Laps 94 to 96 played into the favor of several contenders who topped-off on fuel, but especially for Busch who had nothing to lose by topping off one more time on Lap 95, because he was going to have to fire off well behind the leaders anyway.
“Fortunately, we were just able to get back around, get the restart timed right and just kind of start picking ’em off,” Busch said. “We knew we were going to be close.”
It was close for everyone else, too.
William Byron was the apparent leader of that group but wasn’t told until 15 laps to go that he would need to start saving fuel to make it to the finish. Earlier in that run, Byron was told to push as hard as he could because they would need to top off before making it to the finish.
Then came the order to ‘max save.’
The sudden shift proved challenging for Byron to get exactly right, with his team angrily telling him at one point that he hadn’t been saving enough and that he needed to start backing his corner up by two additional seconds to reach their fuel mark.
Byron, crew chief Rudy Fugle and spotter Tab Boyd thought they had done enough, but the indecisiveness and pivot caught them and they were ultimately over three laps short.
“I kind of thought we were closer on fuel than we were,” Byron conceded. “I thought we could get up as far as we could, and a couple of guys would have to pit and we’d save and win.
“So that was kind of how it was looking to work out there … and then we had to go into max save. I thought for sure we’d make it because usually you’ve got a little bit of fudge factor there, but we ran out with three (laps) to go, so not even close.”
Simultaneously, Kurt Busch was leading a group of drivers that included Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch.
The elder Busch brother was leading that pack, and therefore burning the most fuel of the four, and was never going to be able to make it. Hamlin was eventually told he could make it and to pass Busch, but he ran out with two to go and took the white flag from pit road.
Beshore, atop of the No. 18 pit box said he was never confident Busch would make it, but he hoped. More importantly, circumstances bought his driver that extra lap.
“I was never confident,” Beshore said. “I knew we were in a better position than they were. We had done a better job throughout the run of saving. So, I knew we could get to a spot where we had enough, then we could push and force their hand where they would have to either let us by and save more fuel or run them out of gas.”
Busch was a little more confident, but of course, had nothing to lose after breaking the transmission. He pitted one lap after Hamlin and inherited the lead with one to go as his teammate came down pit road.
He was doing the math.
“When he peeled off, I was like, ‘Okay, well, if I can make it at least one more lap to this point, I still have four seconds behind me, I think I can make it to the line before they catch me.’ I felt pretty good at that point.”
Busch crossed the line four seconds ahead of Larson.
“The 18 did pit a lap after us under caution and that actually probably won them the race,” Larson conceded.
Even that extra lap to top off was a byproduct of NASCAR ordering the No. 18 down pit road to cover the shifter boot as it is a mandated safety feature.
“We sort of had the upper hand by having the penalty, coming a lap later and then Kyle saving early and often put enough for us to be able to run hard at the end and attack,” Beshore said.
Busch offered no rebuttals to the notion that the broken transmission and shifter actually won him the race, even if the entire team felt like they had a race winning car before taking the green flag.
“We would never have been in that position if we didn’t have the trans stick,” Busch said. “When we came down for the green flag stop, I tried to exit pit road, it was really luggy obviously. I lost tons of time doing that. …
“But you’re right, yeah, it put us in the perfect spot that we could top off.
“We were like, ‘Look, put as much gas in it as we can, pack it full,’ (because) we’re going to run it out of the rest of the day. Even if there was another caution, we weren’t going to come down pit road. We were going to have to see what happened.”
What happened was Busch and Beshore recounting their predicament from the media center during the winning team press conference.
Go figure.
Meanwhile, this is the second win of the season for Busch and Beshore in their first season paired together. Their relationship began after Busch narrowly staved off having a winless season last October at Texas Motor Speedway.
Busch very well could have swept the entire weekend if it wasn’t for the lack of a push he could have received from Larson on the final restart.
“I could have beat ’em yesterday, but Kyle Larson didn’t push me far enough into turn one,” Busch said. “I think the 12 pushed the 48 farther. That’s how he got slid up in front of me. It’s racing. Racing is racing.”
Racing was racing on Sunday too, remarkably, and now Beshore has Busch back in the championship conversation.
“We started off slow this year,” Beshore said. “We’ve really sort of I feel like hitting a stride here, gaining on points. We had some issues early in the year … The 550 (hp and high downforce) tracks seem to be our strength right now.
“We haven’t had race-winning speed at the 550s but we’ve had top-5 speed. We’re just missing that little bit to honestly be able to run with the Hendrick cars. …
“But the team and everybody has really gelled. I think this type of event really showed it, like how the team had to dig down deep, overcome problems, solve the problem that we were underneath, make the best out of today’s situation.
“It was a really testament to the team.”
That and some fortuitous breaks, but again, racing is racing.
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