NASCAR CUP SERIES: BUSCH CLASH AT DAYTONA

February 9, 2021

Kyle Busch

Press Conference

Daytona International Speedway

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by our race winner for the Bush Clash at Daytona, Kyle Busch.

We'll roll straight into questions for Kyle.

Q. You've won this race on both the oval and the road course. Thoughts on what you like better in terms of racing the Clash?

KYLE BUSCH: To me, whenever they put a race on the schedule, whether it's a road course or oval, we go, you know what I mean? Winning it on the oval, winning it on the road course now is certainly cool. There's a special adage to that.

I feel like we've had some really good runs on the Rovals and on the road courses, we just haven't been able to finish them out. Tonight we obviously did, due to some unforeseen circumstances by some of the other guys out there.

All is good, I guess, being able to carry out a win here tonight.

Q. When you look at this race, obviously there were the detractors that questioned whether this race would work on the road course. Did you feel like it worked? Did it live up to the hype for the fans?

KYLE BUSCH: Yeah, I mean, I have no idea. I was just a competitor obviously competing and doing everything I could behind the wheel, having my opportunity to go out there and race, race hard.

But as far as the show goes, I'm not sure what the show looked like on television. Hopefully it was a good one. We always want to put on great race, whether it's at Daytona road course or Daytona oval or Phoenix, Martinsville, wherever. We're an entertainment business.

Hopefully it was a good race. I know there was a lot of excitement here or there. There were leaders crashing out of the lead here and there. That kind of shows you how treacherous and tricky this place is.

Q. As a driver, was it better from your seat on the road course compared to the oval where there's a lot less in your control?

KYLE BUSCH: I feel like there's a lot more in your control. When you're on a superspeedway race, a restrictor plate race, there's a lot less in your control. About anybody can win in those types of races. But when you have races like this, it lends itself a little bit more to driver and car and setup and stuff like that.

I think we kind of saw that a little bit today. There was a lot of comers and goers with tires and tire strategies that kind of got guys in the mix and out of the mix. Typically when you have a Daytona plate race here, it's anybody's race really. There's a little bit of luck involved.

Q. Did you see what was going to happen with Chase and Blaney, did you see that coming? Is this package still a little bit so new that there's a little bit of question just how deep you can put it in there?

KYLE BUSCH: Yeah, I kind of felt like there was an interesting opportunity there that was presenting itself. I was kind of catching those guys and running them down for a couple laps there towards the end. I think they were pushing each other a little bit, kind of messing each other up more so than being able to run clean laps.

I was gaining. I wasn't going to get there. But obviously they got together there in that final corner. I wasn't sure if Chase was going to push the issue and push back on Blaney and knock him through the turn and make him miss the exit or what was going to happen. The both of them had to make the turtles, if you will. They just got together and started crashing.

When that started happening, I was hoping they were going to wreck long enough that I could get up in there and get by them, we could win the thing. It's never over till it's over at these types of places, especially when you have those last-corner, last-ditch-effort chicanes like here and the Roval.

Q. (Question about the meaning of winning first race with Ben.)

KYLE BUSCH: I don't think so. Obviously it does lend itself, though, here not being a plate race to being a bit more about preparation, driver, crew chief, the team, the organization, all of us working on our car, trying to make ourselves better, trying to get ourselves to the right position of improving from the last time we were here when we had all the brake failures.

Today the brakes didn't quite work as good. I couldn't quite slow down as good as some of the other guys. So I felt like we got some more room to get better in that regard yet. We'll see what we can improve on when we come back in two weeks.

Q. Have you ever been on the winning side of a finish like that before?

KYLE BUSCH: I'm not quite sure that I have, actually. I feel -- I don't know. I can't remember one anyway. Sometimes it's nice to have that opportunity to go out there and compete and have a shot to win a race. Other times you just keep yourself in the right position in order to have that opportunity when it presents itself at the end.

That's what we did tonight. We just did our job, executed as well as we could execute. It all kind of came together there at the end.

Q. Do you enjoy there not being as many fans around, not hounded, people aren't following you around everywhere?

KYLE BUSCH: Not really. I kind of miss the fans, a little bit of the BS that you get sometimes. I think we all kind of saw it with LeBron James a week or two ago with the Karen on the court that he had to deal with. Every once in a while that's kind of cool to have, I guess. Sometimes it goes a little far. As long as everyone kind of keeps their composure, whatnot about it, it's nice to have some of that.

Obviously I have a lot of fans, they do come out, support and cheer, root us on, get us to Victory Lane a lot of times as well, too. Hopefully one of these days we'll all wake up and this will be a thing of the past.

Q. If you're a sporting fan, would you buy a ticket to go to a sporting event?

KYLE BUSCH: I mean, I had the opportunity to go to the Super Bowl, but I kind of turned it down because I didn't want to take a chance of something stupid happening before we get down here for Daytona. You know what I mean? With everything I got going on and me being in this position, having to stay healthy as best as possible, I'm better off just doing what I can do to keep myself as limited as possible to certain circumstances.

Q. Is the atmosphere different, the first event, Speedweeks, nobody is here?

KYLE BUSCH: I do see fans. I do see campers. I do see people kind of walking around a little bit. I'm not sure what access is available to people. But I have seen some from afar obviously through the glass window in Victory Lane as well, too. There were some in the Daytona 500 Club. There are people around the racetrack.

It's good to have some for whoever can get here and have an opportunity to enjoy in the moment in our greatest spectacle, the Daytona 500 coming this weekend.

Q. What should NASCAR do with the Clash? How should they open up the season?

KYLE BUSCH: I don't know. To me it's just kind of -- I think you have to have a little bit of a wakeup for everybody. Hey, Super Bowl is over, remember NASCAR? We're back. You know what I mean? We were only gone two months. It just kind of reminds everybody that racecars are going to be back on the racetrack again.

There might be people that, Hey, I forgot. I'm going to make sure to tune in this weekend. Hey, I forgot, I'm going to go buy a ticket to the race, which obviously there's not enough tickets available. I'm sure all those are gone already.

It's a part of what world we're in right now. What you do with the Clash is whatever, in my opinion. How we start the year is all about building that excitement. Even if we were told that we race over at New Smyrna, that's kind of a wakeup for everybody like, Hey, NASCAR is in town.

Q. The cars seemed noticeably faster to the naked eye without restrictor plates. Get up to speed a lot faster. Is that true? What part of this course is the fastest for you?

KYLE BUSCH: I think it's into the frontstretch chicane over there, I'm not exactly sure, but I'm going to guess it's right around 200, 203, something like that. We have the backstretch chicane we have to check up for and slow down, but we're still carrying momentum through there. Then we're getting back up into high gear. That is as far, long as we run high gear. So I assume that's how fast we're going.

The biggest thing about the cars being faster here tonight is they had less drag on 'em. From last year's package when we ran here on the road course race, more downforce, more drag, the cars took a little bit longer to get up to speed versus tonight. I don't know if lap time was necessarily faster or not. I'd have to go back and look at my notes from last year to this year.

Q. More aerodynamics on throttling the engine back?

KYLE BUSCH: No, I mean, if you're talking perspective from road course to oval, yeah. I mean, not being restricted, we were running a 750 horsepower motor here. If we ran a 750 horsepower engine with that aero package here at Daytona, we'd be getting way out of the gas for the corners, running 220 down the straightaways. It would be quite more interesting.

THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Kyle.