NASCAR Kansas takeaways: Kyle Busch gets close again, playoff drivers rue missed opportunities

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Five thoughts after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Kansas Speedway …

1. Taking Stock

The bag of ice flew out of the No. 8 car first, followed by the driver after his belts were quickly unbuckled.

Was Kyle Busch furious? Was he planning to confront someone? How would he react to another heartbreak in a year full of letdowns? Cameras and reporters began approaching to find out.

But once his helmet was off and his nasal strip was removed, it was clear Busch wasn’t going to do anything. Or perhaps feel anything.

“Numb,” he said of his emotions.

Ross Chastain won the Kansas race fair and square, and part of the triumph was due to the pressure he applied to Busch while trying to chase down the No. 8 for the race lead. But it was a mistake by Busch, one of the best ever to get behind the wheel of a NASCAR stock car, which ultimately helped Chastain reach victory lane for the third straight season with Trackhouse Racing.

Simply winning a NASCAR Cup Series race is an achievement these days, in this parity-filled era in which driver skill is somewhat blunted by identical cars that largely run the same speeds. Doing it three years in a row, as Chastain has, is an active streak only seven other drivers currently hold.

The longest streak of consecutive seasons with a victory, an all-time record at that, is in serious jeopardy. It belongs to Busch, who last year broke a tie with Richard Petty by winning for the 19th straight year. This year was supposed to be 20, a nice big round number that might put the record even further out of reach.

But it hasn’t happened, despite several close calls and teases.

Sunday was another. After a long battle with Chastain for the lead, Busch had finally gotten around the No. 1 car and was in control of the race with 31 laps to go when he came upon the soon-to-be lapped car of Chase Briscoe — who was fighting for his playoff life as one of the 12 drivers still eligible for the championship.

Briscoe did not make it easy for Busch to pass, but he also didn’t do anything dirty or out of line.

“Granted, they’ve got a race to run,” Busch said. “But back in the old days, when you were under 30 to go, lapped traffic would lay over and give you a lane and let the leaders race. I wasn’t getting that, so I tried to force my hand to get to his outside.”

That’s when it happened. Busch’s car was suddenly in a tricky aero spot— “it gave all the air in all the wrong places,” as he described it — and he spun out. His chances of winning in 2024, this most disappointing of seasons, seemingly took another hit.

BUSCH SPINS FROM THE LEAD!

The No. 8 goes around off of Turn 2! pic.twitter.com/agmrjapaba

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) September 29, 2024

Did Busch think Briscoe should have given him more room?

“It doesn’t matter what I expect,” Busch said. “I don’t think anybody gives anyone anything anymore. It’s all take, take, take.”

Further down pit road, Briscoe was licking his own wounds after finishing 24th — his team’s “worst race of our season,” he said. His hopes of advancing another round certainly took a hit, and Stewart-Haas Racing’s lone playoff driver — who only made it in the regular-season finale after outdueling Busch at Darlington — is now 25 points below the cutoff line.

Briscoe said he wasn’t going to just pull over for Busch — he needed to stay on the lead lap, after all — but felt he left a car width plus “a couple inches.” And that seemed to be backed up by the replay; Briscoe didn’t make contact with Busch or squeeze him into the wall, he simply didn’t give much room while racing for his playoff life.

There may not have been much room on the outside, but it was ultimately Busch who made the error by losing control.

“It definitely wasn’t intentional,” Briscoe said. “It was just one of those racing things in this car. You get so loose outside of guys.

“I hate it for them, I’m a Kyle Busch fan. I want to see him win and keep the streak alive. And obviously, he had a really good opportunity.”

But was that Busch’s last, best chance? He’s been running better lately, but there are now only six races remaining. It’s not looking great, and now Kansas gets added to the pile of regrets.

Numb, he had said. You can see why. This much losing can wear anyone down, especially one of NASCAR’s all-time fiercest competitors.

2. What If?

Here are some alternate storylines we’d be talking about today had a few things unfolded differently.

• If Denny Hamlin’s pit crew didn’t have one of its worst races to date: Hamlin felt he had the fastest car and should have won to lock himself into the next round of the playoffs, but could never show it after his pit crew kept costing him track position. Afterward, when asked how he stayed in the race mentally to salvage an eighth-place finish, Hamlin indicated the day flustered him. “I’m not in it mentally,” he responded. “I can tell you that. There’s a lot of wires crossed, bolts loose at the moment.”

• If Christopher Bell didn’t hit the wall twice: While Hamlin said his car was the fastest, Bell actually had a chance to show the speed of his No. 20. He led the most laps (122) but should have left with a lot more points (and perhaps a win) instead of finishing seventh. “Obviously wish I had a couple corners back, because there were a couple of them where I made mistakes,” he said.

• If Kyle Larson doesn’t run over a piece of debris on Lap 19: After Larson shook off a crash in the playoff opener to advance through Round 1, he started Sunday with a 39-point lead over the cutoff line. That immediately was chopped by 21 points, and now Larson has a much less comfortable 18-point buffer heading into a dicey race at Talladega where he’d “just like to finish,” he said. Was he in disbelief at his bad luck at Kansas? “It’s just racing,” he said. “Things happen, I guess. But just unfortunate.”

3. NASquirks

After the Next Gen cars seemed to be lifting off the ground too easily in “blowover” incidents this summer, NASCAR is strongly considering implementing a new aero device starting this weekend at Talladega that could dramatically reduce the chances of a car going airborne by itself.

Sounds great, right? The problem, if there is one, is that it won’t look very aesthetically pleasing and also might impact drivers’ visibility. The acrylic shark fin-like device, if approved, would be placed on the right side of the windshield and extend nearly from the roof to the hood.

“Obviously, there’s data to prove it’s going to be an improvement,” said Austin Cindric, who was among the drivers who attended a Saturday morning briefing on the topic. “It’s more about, do you introduce things in the middle of the playoffs, after an entire season? Does it make the cars look different than what the fans would expect? It’s hard to say.

“There’s a lot of politics, not just data, that go behind making those decisions.”

You would think safety would trump politics (i.e. any teams or manufacturers worried about how an aero bit on the windshield would affect their performance), but some drivers in the meeting also expressed concerns about visibility. Will the windshield tear-offs work the same? Will they be able to see toward the right through the aero piece?

Ultimately, though, it would seem keeping cars from going airborne is more important than anything else.

“If they believe it’s good, that it’s going to help to keep cars on the ground, I’m all for it,” Daniel Suárez said. “But in reality, we can do all the testing we want; the real test is on track. If we don’t actually try it on track, we’ll never know.”

4. Championship 4cast

In this space throughout the playoffs, we’re taking a look at the current power rankings for the Championship 4 and comparing them to our pre-playoff picks (Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney).

1. Bell (pre-playoffs: 1; last week: 2): As mentioned above, Bell easily had winning speed and only a couple mistakes prevented that from happening. He’s still running well, and his seventh-place finish was actually his second-worst result in the last six weeks.

2. Larson (pre-playoffs: 3; last week: 1): We don’t know how the race would have played out, but Larson can’t be penalized here for running over a piece of debris. It’s just that now his cushion to the cutoff line is not as robust, which is a concern if something happens at Talladega or the Roval.

3. Blaney (pre-playoffs: 4; last week: 4): He showed solid speed on an intermediate track, finishing third in both stages and fourth in the race. Team Penske might just be following its typical pattern of finding more pace when it matters at this time of year.

4. William Byron (pre-playoffs: not ranked; last week: honorable mention): This has been a tough team to figure out, but Byron ran second at Kansas and was the top finisher among the playoff drivers. He heads to Talladega as the points leader, and the speed he showed on Sunday could translate to Las Vegas and Homestead in the next round if he can survive the next two weeks.

Honorable mention: Reddick, Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman, Hamlin.

5. Best of the Rest

• Ross Chastain (first): In a bittersweet response to missing the playoffs, Chastain has outscored all but one playoff driver (Alex Bowman) in the first four weeks of the postseason and now has the victory he had been seeking in the first 26 races.

• Martin Truex Jr. (third): After Busch bowed out, the soon-to-be-retired Truex had a golden opportunity to win the race himself and controlled a late restart against Chastain. But Chastain fired off better than Truex, and the 44-year-old had to settle for his first top-five finish since May — also at Kansas.

• Zane Smith (10th): The rookie was fired by Trackhouse Racing to make room for Shane van Gisbergen and hasn’t announced his plans for next season, but he sure has improved his resume in the last two months. Smith’s average finish in the first 23 races was 25.8, and he was 33rd in the standings coming out of the Olympic break. But in the last seven races, his average finish has improved to 13.6 — sixth best in the entire series during that time.

(Top photo of Kyle Busch, right, and Ross Chastain during Sunday’s race: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)