With no finishes outside of the top nine in his last eight starts at Watkin’s Glen, it’s no secret that Kyle Busch is excited to hit the road course this weekend in hopes of a third Sprint Cup Series victory at the Glen.
“This is always a place that we enjoy coming to,” he commented. “It’s a good place for me here the last few years and so I’m looking forward to this weekend both on the Nationwide side and the Sprint Cup side. Practice was a little shaky this morning I guess for the 54 car (NNS), but all in all we have decent speed. Definitely not as good of speed as we want compared to those cars that are fast and we’ll just have to continue to work on that and get ready for Cup practice, too.”
Obviously with being good at Watkin’s Glen, Busch has figured out two of the keys that any driver should know – restarts and braking zones. Busch notes that restarts tend to get crazy because everybody knows that it’s an opportunity to try and get an extra spot. That’s why, as a driver, as he tries to keep his tires cleaned off and hit his marks, while making whatever move possible. Though in the process, part of hitting your marks is making the best opportunity out of the braking zones.
“That’s obviously the areas that you make passes if the guy in front of you is not making mistakes,” he commented. “You can pass anywhere on this race track essentially if a guy makes a mistake but if they’re not it’s essentially a braking zone to just out brake that guy in front of you. Making sure that you keep your brakes on your car and keep them cool enough that you can go after people in particular corners and out-brake them.”
In looking at whom he has to beat to win, Busch isn’t counting Marcos Ambrose as the only guy to beat as some of others have throughout the week.
“I think that when you come into this race though you look at the favorites and I think there’s three favorites because they’ve been the top three guys here the last four years, three years, whatever it’s been,” Busch commented. “It’s myself, the 2 (Brad Keselowski) and the 9 (Marcos Ambrose). I think you’re going to see those three cars be fast. I think you can always mix in a fourth and a fifth guy depending on who those are. Some days they’re different than others.
“This year obviously the 24 (Jeff Gordon) has been real stout — maybe he can carry that on into this week. I don’t necessarily think that anyone is chasing anyone. I think it’s just going to be us three trying to figure out who is going to win it.”
