Kyle Busch seeks to match a mark set by Kevin Harvick earlier this season. If Busch can win the Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond Raceway, it will be his third consecutive Cup victory.
Harvick dominated the field earlier this year with his three-race winning streak at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway and ISM Raceway. Kyle Busch finished runner-up to Harvick twice in that stretch. That kicked off a six-race streak of top-three finishes, including wins at Texas Motor Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway.
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Busch’s recent stats at Richmond would not necessarily put him at the top of the list of drivers mostly likely to win this week. He has not finished in the top five there in his last three attempts and hasn’t won since 2012, which was his fourth consecutive victory in the spring event. Busch has not yet won a fall Richmond race.
Included in his more recent Richmond results is a pair of back-to-back runner-up finishes in fall 2015 and spring 2016. More importantly, he is bolstered by his current winning streak as well as his feeling about the track.
“I love Richmond,” Busch said in a press release. “It’s one of my favorite race tracks and one of my best race tracks. I love being able to go there and, of course, we put on some pretty good races there. We won four spring races in a row and I would have loved to have made it five or more. It’s a neat race track and it’s certainly an excitement track and there is a lot of action that happens there.”
Last week, Busch won for the seventh time at Bristol – adding to his record as the winningest active driver there. The skill needed there will not translate to Richmond, however.
“Richmond and Bristol are more than oil and water, more than day and night,” Busch said. “Bristol is an attack-type race track yet, when you attack, you can get yourself in trouble. Richmond is a very methodical race track and you have to be very – you’re very on edge there all the time, especially corner entry, getting into the corners. You’re always loose there and you have to be able to be loose there in order to carry the speed through the middle and have good drive off.
“We’re back to two night races at Richmond again and sometimes nighttime just feeds itself with not as much grip and makes it to where the bottom is the preferred lane. Daytime allows the race track to widen out and be hotter where, on a cooler racetrack, you’re looking for where the rubber is for at least a little while until the whole track rubbers in, and then you have to go back to the bottom, anyway.”
While Busch has slipped outside the top five in his last three Richmond starts, his career average there is the best among active drivers. With a 7.4 career average at Richmond, he tops second-place Harvick’s 8.5. The most impressive statistic about Busch this week is that he has finished all but one of 10,026 laps of competition in 25 starts.
Busch has won three consecutive races once before in his career - at Kentucky Speedway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Indianapolis Motor Speedway in July 2015.
The last two times he has had back-to-back Cup wins, however, Busch finished outside the top 25 in his next attempt – most recently following wins at New Hampshire and Dover International Speedway with a 29th at Charlotte Motor Speedway last October.