FORT WORTH, Texas - Kyle Busch admits he got “impatient” Sunday, and that cost him a chance to sweep the weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.
After winning Friday night’s Gander Outdoors Truck Series race and Saturday’s Xfinity race, Busch was poised to win the Cup race until he smacked the wall 54 laps from the finish.
Problems started five laps earlier when his car got loose in Turn 2 while leading, and he shot up the track. He fell to fourth and was trying to make his way back when he bounced off the wall in Turn 2.
“We made an adjustment on the second-to-last pit stop to tighten it up, and it got loose,” said Busch, who led a race-high 66 laps. “I was just trying to keep the lap time going and keep the speed in it, and it busted loose on me, and I had to catch it. Once I did that and got back in dirty air, (I) was just trying to race back up to the front with those guys.
“Should have just been more patient and just waited for the pit cycles to come up and try to pass them on pit road but got impatient and smacked the fence.”
The contact forced him to pit under green and put him a lap down at the time. He was never a factor after that. With the race not having a caution from that point on and the field needing to pit, Busch cycled back to the lead lap and finished 10th.
Busch is the only driver to win three national series races in the same weekend at the same track. He did so at Bristol in 2010 and ’17.
This was his third attempt to sweep the weekend at Texas. His previous attempts at Texas came in 2009 and ’14. Both times he won the Truck and Xfinity races but fell short in the Cup race, placing 11th in 2009 and fourth in 2014.