Kyle Busch’s bid for a Las Vegas Speedway weekend sweep came up short Sunday in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Pennzoil 400.
Busch won the Gander Outdoors Truck Series and Xfinity Series races to open the Las Vegas weekend and was looking to run the table at the Las Vegas native’s home track on Sunday. But a pit road speeding penalty on Lap 129 took Busch from the lead and he was not able to make up enough ground to run down race winner Joey Logano and second-place Brad Keselowski. Busch was forced to settle for third place.
Busch pointed to the new Cup Series rules package as a reason why he could not catch the leaders.
“Yeah, because the cars don’t have any speed,” Busch said of the lower horsepower. “You’re wide open just trying to suck off of any cars that you can that’s in front of you and get a draft, and I was running 31 flats when I was chasing those leaders down, and then once I got there I stalled out to 31:40’s because the wind was just so bad behind those guys that you couldn’t corner anymore. You couldn’t maneuver. I couldn’t run low.”
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Busch did all he could and his team worked as hard as possible to get him back into contention. But in the end, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver leaves Las Vegas frustrated and wondering about what might have been.
“Coming to pit road there we tried a different brake package for us this weekend, and trying to make up time, and in order to get a bigger jump on the guys behind me coming to pit road there, just ruined it for us, and we had to come from the back, and I think we passed the most cars today so I think we were the most impressive today, but doesn’t matter because we don’t have a trophy,” Busch said.
“Whatever. Next week.”
