WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Kyle Busch left Atlanta last month third in the season standings, 36 points from the points lead.
Six weeks later, he enters Sunday’s Cup race at Watkins Glen outside the top 10 and 170 points out of the points lead.
A five-race stretch that saw him finish 36th or worse three times has the former Cup champion wondering if “luck, karma and whatever all the rest of that stuff is” is conspiring against him.
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A possible regular-season championship in his first season at Richard Childress Racing is gone and so are any extra playoff points. Those only go to drivers in the top 10 entering the playoffs.
That’s not Busch’s main focus entering the final road course race of the regular season (3 p.m. ET on USA Network).
His goal is simple.
“The mindset is to stop the bleeding,” the two-time Cup champion said.
Busch seemed to be headed toward that goal last weekend at Indianapolis, running in the top 10 before a valve spring broke in his engine and saddled him with a 36th-place result.
That five-race stretch came after he scored seven consecutive top 10s only adds to his befuddlement.
After last weekend’s woes at Indy, he wrote on the social media site formerly known as Twitter: “I just don’t know anymore.”
A week later, he still doesn’t.
“I don’t know what to do to change it,” said Busch, who starts ninth. “There’s all the rabbits’ feet in the world, all the four leaf clovers and everything else – a lot of people say that they don’t believe in luck. There is luck, trust me. I know. I’ve been in this a long time.
“We had four or five weeks where we had really good luck. Like we stuffed it into the tire barriers and we didn’t break a radiator or anything like that at the Chicago Street Race – we came back and we finished fifth. Like that was a lucky day.. we stole one on that one.
“It’s just stuff that we kind of burned all of that up there and now we’re paying the price for it over here. So it’s like how do you turn it around and get it headed back in the right direction?
“I’ve had talks like this with (Matt) Kenseth before and Carl (Edwards) before – where you go winless seasons and you just wonder what’s not working and there’s nothing that you can pinpoint yourself to. Martin Truex Jr., him and I talked about it before, where it’s like – man, you just have to wait. You just have to wait until it turns around and eventually it’ll turn around and it’ll be fine.”
But Busch admits “I’m a very impatient person, and I’m ready for the results to be indicative to how I know they should be.”
