KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 M&M’s Toyota Camry finished 30th in Sunday’s Bank of America ROVAL 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
What was the thought process when you stayed out on old tires?
“I don’t know. Just trying to get everything we could get. You come into a race like this and you throw a couple Hail Mary’s and they rarely work, especially when you don’t have the car. That 9 (Chase Elliott) car is spectacular here and it was superfast. I followed him for a lot of laps trying to figure it out and he just gets smaller and smaller as he’s driving away. I don’t know, it’s not just this race. It’s a whole season and it’s a culmination of things that led to this and led to our elimination. We knew it coming into this round that this was going to be the hardest round for us to get through. Pretty much impossible and it was. We weren’t able to make up enough or get a win. We’ll just have to fight for a win here the rest of the year.”
Can you sum up the way the Playoffs played out for you?
“It’s just been the year. Nothing has played out and been on our side. It’s just been unfortunate circumstances, a lot of bad luck. These guys on this M&M’s Camry team never give up and they fight all year long and every race and every lap, every pit stop as we can see. Man, just one of them off years. It’s been a terrible year for me. As other sports greats would say, there’s many other drivers that would love to have a year that we’re having, but it’s just frustrating to know how good we are and what we’re capable of and being champions from last year to not come out here and be able to succeed and be able to win. Fact of the matter, if we could win, we would be a heck of a lot better off. I knew this round was going to be trouble with the year we had. I was right.”
Did you think you had anything to win when you stayed out rather than pit for tires?
“No. We probably would have been third or fourth or somewhere in there. The 9 (Chase Elliott) was stellar. They have the best car here. We got closer this year than we were last year for as fast off as we were last year, I felt like this was at least a decent run or a better run for us. Still have a lot of work to do to try to get better. I’m not sure what it is, but we lack a lot of drive off the corners.”
— Toyota Racing —