By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Bristol Motor Speedway has seen some changes the past decade… and so has a lot in the sport for Kyle Busch.
However, the talk of the week leading to the half-mile is the All-Star Race that will be run with various aero changes, including the use of a restrictor plate. Following a major shift for the image and competition of next month’s non-points event at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Busch said he’s not a fan of the change. However, the reigning race winner knows the 1.5-mile tracks can improve.
“We do need to orchestrate some better racing at mile-and-a-half tracks, particularly Charlotte for some reason,” Busch said Friday from Bristol. “It hasn’t been one of our best racetracks there since the repave as far as working multiple lanes. It’s been pretty single file there and I don’t know why.
“I don’t have any better ideas than [those] being thrown out there. I can’t complain if I don’t have any better ideas. The fact of the matter is that we’re trying to orchestrate something that doesn’t quite exist.”
Though he may be low on ideas on the spot, Busch doesn’t enjoy the sound of slowing the lead car down to keep competition close, a fall-back common in plate racing at Daytona and Talladega.
“We need to bring out more things to try,” he said. “I’m not a particular fan of slowing the lead car down and bringing that guy back to the rest of the field, but if that gets us back to closer racing then so be it. I try to be the smartest, fastest and best racecar driver that I can be no matter what package is.
“I have to give it a chance first at Charlotte to see what it’s like before I completely throw it out. That’s not what I signed up to be a NASCAR driver for is to scrunch the field up and take the advantage away from those guys that are fast.”
Beyond the changes and its predicted effect on the event, Busch pondered a more philosophical question following a week of announcements and changes: Why are people never happy?
“There are things over the course of the years and I’m not sure that you can fabricate racing to being anything better than what exists,” he said. “People say how great it was back in the day, but you had two guys or three guys on the lead lap sometimes. Richard Petty would win races by two laps at places and now you have 25 cars on the lead lap and competition is as close as it’s ever been and people are complaining about it [saying] there is a lack of competition.
“I don’t know what you expect to be competition – you want the last-place guy to be able to be the first-place guy? There’s always going to be a last-place guy. It’s been in F1 forever, NASCAR forever, XFINITY forever. Nobody’s happy.
“Be miserable like me and then nothing will surprise you. It’s just everybody wants the opposite of what they see and what they get.”