By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Trying to earn his eighth win across all three national series of 2019, Kyle Busch didn’t have enough Sunday at Martinsville Speedway.
Failing to lead a lap across 500 laps, Busch was up front for the final 45-lap run to the end. The shootout saw him hold off Ryan Blaney, however, sit and watch Chase Elliott and race winner Brad Keselowski race to the checkereds.
The race got close at times, however, for the No. 18 Toyota.
“I had a nose undernetah the [No.] 2 in the middle of Turns 3,4 and he just chopped my nose off,” Busch said of Keselowski. “Normally, when you hit a guy, they move out of the way. Instead, it seemed my car had to move out of the way. Then, the No. 9 got by me, so we finished third.”
With higher downforce in Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series cars than in 2018, Busch noticed the difficult passing conditions throughout the day.
“It was tougher today than usual,” he said. “Normally, you can see guys sliping around and sliping a lot sooner than today. That gives you a better opportunity to make moves and make passes sooner in a run.
“Obviously, the competition was maybe a tick closer, car-to-car-to-car. But when you get so close, that’s it, you can’t do any more.”
The window of opportunity was short.
“If you don’t pass within the first five laps, it takes you about 65 to start to see enough fall-off that then you can work guys over on tire degradation,” he said. “It’s just so hard to pass, there is so much downforce — we’re going through these corners so fast and there is no way to go around the outside of someone. There’s not enough grip out there.”
Despite the tough passing, Busch believes he and the team finished higher than they should have.
“I could only do so much there for a while, when I was out there with my hands full at the mid-point of the race running 12th,” he said. “We finished P3, which should have been probably eighth or 10th. That was a hell of a lot better day than we probably should’ve had. We made the most of our opportunity.”