NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Crown Royal presents the Curtiss Shaver 400

Topics:  Crown Royal presents the Curtiss Shaver 400

Kyle Busch
July 29, 2012

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

KERRY THARP:  Our race runner‑up for today's 19th annual Crown Royal presents the Curtiss Shaver 400 at the Brickyard Powered by Big Machine Records is Kyle Busch.  He turns in a career‑best finish here at the Brickyard of second place, besting his previous career best finish of fourth.  He drove the No.18 M&M's Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing.  Kyle, you had a strong car throughout the day.  48 certainly was very, very tough to beat today, but you tracked him I guess the best you could.
KYLE BUSCH:  Yeah, we did.  We had a really good race car today.  Dave and the guys brought a phenomenal piece here from the Joe Gibbs Racing shop, and we worked on it well this weekend, and we felt like unloading right off the truck it was pretty good, felt pretty comfortable.
The laps in the Nationwide car in my Monster Energy Camry there I think helped a little bit, but also just having a good race car over on this side helped a little bit, too.
Can't say enough about the effort the guys put in for our best finish here and our best run.  If it wasn't for the 48, we were probably in our zip code on the rest of the field, but Jimmie Johnson was in his own country today, so we just couldn't keep up with him.  That was the best we had, and it seemed like that was the best anybody had.
So good effort by the whole M&M's team, proud of them, and for the last eight weeks that we've had, we've run well, we just have not been able to close out the deal and finish where we've been running, so this was a good day to be able to do that.

Q.  Kyle, have you had a race this year where a guy could take off on the restarts and zoom away like he did?
KYLE BUSCH:  I think I did some of that yesterday.  I was hoping that I could do the same today, but seemed like there was another guy that did it instead of me.  You know, it was‑‑ certainly he was really, really fast, and you could see it, too, on the restarts when he would make it through the corners and he just put his car anywhere he wanted and would just slam on the gas pedal and take off from me.  His car was down and digging.  It definitely had a lot of grip and definitely was really fast.

Q.  Talk for a moment about what the pit strategies were and fuel saving and that sort of thing as you were trying to chase Jimmie.  How did all that play into the final?
KYLE BUSCH:  Well, you know, when we all‑‑ the caution came out before our window, but it was only two or three laps before our window, so everybody was going to pit, and then try to go the rest of the way.  Then there was a few cautions in there, that really long caution that gave everybody the fuel that they needed in order to go the rest of the way.
Just tire strategy kind of played into the role of what guys were going to do on pit road, whether it was going to be four or whether it was going to be two.  It seemed like any time we'd get too many laps on our tires, then we'd put rights on.  It just wouldn't be as fast as if you'd just put four on.
But you've got to play the track position game, too.  It takes a lot of car to pass people here, and sometimes you're not able to do that.  You've just got to be able to get up there and get up in front of them.