The Alliance Truck Parts Ford Fusion didn’t quite have the speed to compete for the win in the Good Sam 500 at Phoenix International Raceway. However, after starting 19th, BK worked his way into the Top 10 and hung tight to the fringe of the lead group for most of the day. But disaster struck with 87 laps to go when the right rear tire on the No. 2 car shredded, forcing Kes to drop from the 10th position, where he was running at the time of the incident. He ultimately lost five laps as a result of the issue and subsequent repairs, and settled for a 29th place finish.

“We ran in that 10th place range pretty much the entire race until we cut the tire,” Brad said afterward. “The Alliance Truck Parts Fusion was probably about a 10th place car, but you never know how things would have played out without the tire issue.”

The No. 2 was one of four cars to encounter a similar tire problem at Phoenix, with their tires shredding at the end of long runs. Goodyear, the sport’s tire manufacturer, reported that the intense brake heat generated by the cars at Phoenix was melting the tire beads at the position where the edge of the tire sits on the wheel, causing the rubber to separate. It was an issue that also doomed the days of the Richard Childress Racing Chevrolets of Ryan Newman (31) and Paul Menard (27) as well as the Roush Fenway Racing Ford of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (17).

Before the tire incident put a damper on his day, Brad had made the most of what he had in the Alliance Truck Parts Ford, which failed to show the speed all weekend that made the No. 2 car so successful in Las Vegas just one week prior.

The weekend in the desert began with a disappointing Fast Friday. The Deuce was 12th quickest in the day’s lone practice session, but the speed vanished in qualifying and after running eighth fastest in the first round he logged just the 19th best time in round two, failing to advance to the final round of knockout qualifying for the third time in four races already this season. The Deuce missed the final round of qualifying just eight times all of last season.

Speed was an issue for the ATP Ford early Saturday as well, as BK was just 21st best in the morning practice session. But just a few hours later, the No. 2 had made great strides as Brad posted the seventh quickest lap in final practice. That gave the 2 crew some confidence heading into race day.

After starting on the inside of Row 10, the Alliance Truck Parts Ford quickly gained ground, moving up to 16th at the outset of the race. However, as other cars like the No. 88 of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the No. 48 of Jimmie Johnson surged from further back to the front of the field, they left the No. 2 car in their wake. Kes also struggled with the handling of his black and yellow Ford Fusion early in the day and briefly slipped out of the Top 20 around Lap 20.

About 40 laps into the race, as the No. 2 crew closed in on their first pit stop of the day, BK reported that the Deuce was running loose-in and loose-out of turns and was tight in the middle, a troubling condition that made the car difficult to drive and made it even more difficult to gain ground on and pass other cars to move toward the front.

When the first caution came out at lap 52, for the first tire bead issue of the day on the No. 31 car of Ryan Newman, the No. 2 car was marked in 18th position. Thanks to a great first stop by the No. 2 crew, which included air pressure and wedge adjustments to improve the handling of the Deuce for Brad, the Alliance Truck Parts Ford gained two spots on pit road and restarted in 16th, his best position of the day. He moved up a spot in the Lap 60 restart from there started picking off drivers in a march toward the Top 10.

After taking a several laps to get by the No. 5 of Kasey Kahne to 14th, the No. 2 driver quickly drove down and passed the No. 42 of Kyle Larson at Lap 78 to move into 13th. BK continued to note that the Deuce was too loose on entry and exit of turns as the green flag run went on, but it didn’t stop him from chasing down the No. 43 of Aric Amirola and moving by him for 12th on Lap 98. By the 1/3 mark of the race at Lap 104, he’d passed Austin Dillon in the No. 3 car to take 11th place. He was running there, just outside the Top 10 when the second caution of the day came out at Lap 107.

Once again it was a melted tire bead that caused a single car incident, this time for the No. 27 of Paul Menard, who hit the wall and brought out the yellow. From P11, Brad followed the field down for his second pit stop of the day under caution. Another great stop from the 2 crew gained BK two more spots on pit road and he was scored in ninth for the ensuing restart, the Deuce’s first appearance in the Top 10 all day.

However, that did not last long. On the Lap 113 restart, circumstances beyond his control forced Kes to cede a few spots. Starting from the inside of Row 5, the No. 2 got a little stuck on the inside, when the line bottled up in front of him. As the field re-organized to run single file through the 1.022 mile desert oval, multiple cars drove by before BK was able to tuck his Alliance Truck Parts Ford into line in P11. He then had to survive a near disastrous incident where his car lost speed in the straightaway. The No. 78 car of Martin Truex Jr. closed in fast behind him and as Matt Kenseth drove his No. 20 down to try to make a pass, the trio briefly went three-wide into Turn 3 before Kes was able to pull away.

The No. 78 eventually caught the Deuce around the midway point of the race and pushed Brad back to 12th, where he sat when the third caution of the day came out at Lap 163. Once more the caution was caused by a tire failure, this time on the No. 17 of Ricky Stenhouse Jr., which sent the car hard into the wall in Turn 1 and brought out the yellow flag.

Once more the No. 2 crew did an excellent job on pit road, quickly making adjustments and putting four fresh tires on the Deuce to get Brad in and out with one of the quickest stops in the field. This time he gained three spots on pit road back to ninth position for the Lap 169 restart.

This time he was able to hold his ground on the restart and kept a stranglehold on the ninth position for about 25 laps. He dropped back to 10th when a hard-charging Kyle Busch, whose No. 18 had fallen from the front of the field to the middle of the pack thanks to some pit road issues on the previous stop, passed the No. 2 on his way to the front. Still Brad held firm on the edge of the Top 10 until Lap 227 when he became the fourth tire-related casualty of the day.

As the right rear tire on the Alliance Truck Parts Ford shredded in the tri-oval and spewed debris all over the track, BK did a great job to avoid contact with either the wall or a fellow competitor as he fell off the pace. However, he was caught at the wrong end of the track and had to nurse the car halfway around the track to pit road under caution. By the time the No. 2 car made it to his pit stall the right rear wheel was essentially out of rubber down to the rim.

The 2 Crew slapped new tires on the Deuce and did their best to repair moderate damage to the right rear quarter panel, caused by the release of the shredded tire. They got the black and yellow Ford back on the track under caution, where BK was set to take his spot at the tail end of the lead lap. However, when Brad returned to the track, he realized the damage of the shredded tire had not only impacted the right rear quarter panel, it had also severed the rear brake line.

“That was unfortunate and we aren’t really sure why but there isn’t anything we can really do about it,” Brad said of the issue. “It is hard to say really where we would have been if that hadn’t happened.”

The brake line obstacle took a little longer to repair and forced the No. 2 team to essentially abort their pursuit of the race win. As they fixed the further damage to the rear of the car on pit road, the Alliance Truck Parts Ford lost five laps to the leaders. BK returned to the race for the restart at Lap 235, five laps down in 32nd position. He managed to gain three positions over the final 75 laps of the race, though he lost a sixth lap to race winner Kevin Harvick as well, and drove the Deuce home to a 29th place finish, the No. 2 team’s worst of the year so far.

As a result, of the unfortunate incident, Brad gained just 12 points at Phoenix, and fell from sixth to 11th in the points standings. He now has 110 points, 44 behind Phoenix race winner Kevin Harvick, the new Cup points leader. Harvick also tops the Chase grid after four races while Brad slid from second to fourth in the Chase Grid, behind the other three race winners so far this season, Harvick, Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin. All four are essentially locks for the Chase by virtue of their wins.

NEXT UP

The NASCAR slate completes its three-week NASCAR Goes West tour of the Pacific side of the United States with a trip to Southern California for the annual race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana.

Brad is the defending race winner at Fontana, where he rallied from fifth on the final restart to win with a final lap pace of Kurt Busch last March. The victory marked BK’s first and only win of the 2015 season.

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As he climbs into an Alliance Truck Parts colored black and yellow Ford Fusion for the first time this season for the Good Sam 500 at PIR, and continues his quest for his second NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship, BK will also be looking to add to the win column and start stacking victories.

He did just that during his 2012 championship season, when he won five times. He then did so again two years ago, when he won a career-high six times, beginning with a victory in Vegas. In fact, with last Sunday’s win, Brad has now logged 12 of his 18 career Sprint Cup Series wins in even-numbered years and will spend the rest of the 2016 campaign attempting to add to that number. Kes can’t explain the phenomenon that has been his success in even even years, but he plans to ride the wave and try his best to have consistent success.

“I don’t know if there’s really any logic behind that. I don’t feel any different every other year,” he said of the trend. “Sometimes teams just get on streaks good and bad. We finished last year on a really good streak, they just weren’t wins. They were solid, consistent races, leading a lot of laps. I think we’ve carried a lot of that over so far. But that can reset any time. The roller coaster can go up and it goes down. You just try to ride the waves both ways as best you can.”

Of course, their recent history of winning early in seasons also puts the No. 2 team in strong position as the season moves forward. With a victory in their back pocket and a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup all but locked up, the 2 crew will once again be able to open up their playbook as they attempt to tack on more wins and get into their very best form in time for the Chase. That means crew chief Paul Wolfe will have free rein to see just how much speed he can find in the No. 2 Team Penske Ford.

“It’s huge,” Wolfe said after last week’s win. “Last year we were able to get the win in Fontana, and now here we are even earlier than that. It just allows us the opportunity to continue to try new things and develop our cars to be as strong as we can when the Chase starts. It’ll be some different things we do on race day too. Not having to worry about points any more, we might try some different things here and there—some different setups, explore a little bit.”

Brad’s win last weekend came as the lead of a one-two finish for Team Penske as teammate Joey Logano finished second. It was a great day all around for Penske, as Ryan Blaney turned in a sixth-place finish in the Penske-powered Wood Brothers No. 21 car. The victory was a statement that Penske is one of the squads to be feared on the 1.5-mile tracks, which are a critical component of the Chase.

“Certainly the performance we showed today, finishing one-two with Team Penske, shows that when we get things right, we can be one of the dominant teams—but not by a long ways,” Brad said. “The 20 car (Matt Kenseth) was strong. I thought he was going to win when he got the lead. And the 48 car (Jimmie Johnson), he was fast all day, but we seemed to be able to hang on and work with him, and that was good. Joey got to the lead a couple of times, and I thought he was going to be not passable. And the 18 (Kyle Busch), when he got to the lead, I thought, ‘Oh now we’re racing for second.’ But then he fell off at the end.”

As BK explained, while the season goes along, more and more teams will figure out the setup. In fact that’s already happening at Phoenix. The Joe Gibbs Racing trio of Busch, Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin qualified 1-2-3 on Friday for Sunday’s race, with their teammate Kenseth close behind in sixth.

Then on Saturday, the two practice sessions were led by the Stewart-Haas Racing duo of Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch. Nearly all of the top contenders have shown flashes of speed already this season, in addition to a few new names throwing their hats in the ring. Brad was asked by the media on Friday if he pays attention to what’s going on with his fellow drivers or keeps his focus on his own team’s performance and explained that a delicate balance between the two is vitally important to success.

<“There’s a balance between watching other teams and focusing on your own,” he said. “A lot of people will tell you ‘Just do your own thing the best you can and you’ll be alright.’ That’s not really how sports work. You line up against other teams all the time. So I think you have to keep your focus on yourself and the other teams at the same time, which is one way that can make you kind of cross-eyed, but it’s important to do so.”

BK was particularly complementary of the Gibbs quartet, which, thanks to Hamlin’s Daytona 500 victory, is one of three races teams with a win so far this year along with Team Penske (BK at Vegas) and Hendrick Motorsports (Jimmie Johnson at Atlanta). The other three drivers for Gibbs have all been strong contenders for wins and between the four of them, JGR drivers have led 261 of the 797 laps runs in the Sprint Cup Series so far this season. Their qualifying performance at Phoenix shows they have speed once again this weekend and it will be paramount to Penske’s chances to try to catch up.

The Gibbs cars, there’s a reason why they’re 1-3 right now. They have a lot of speed and they’re doing things at a very high level,” Brad said. “They’ve had a shot at winning the first three races and been very close to doing that. I don’t know if anyone else can say the same. It’s our goal to of course go out there and find some speed to be able to put up the numbers they’re putting up in qualifying and hopefully we can do so. But they have a lot to be proud of with the things that they’ve done to their cars to make them so fast and of course we want to do the same and get ahead.”

Despite the dominant speed of some teams, the racing has been tremendous thus far under NASCAR’s new low-downforce aerodynamics package. Over the first three races, 20 different drivers have held the lead for at least one lap and the season has featured 68 lead changes over three weeks. Last week’s finish also showed just how much setups can vary.

Kyle Busch’s car was outstanding early on the final run. With last year’s package, he very well might have checked out and ran away with a win. But instead, the No. 18 Toyota fell off over the long run, and BK’s No. 2 Ford only grew stronger, allowing Kes to ultimately roar past Busch and race to the win.

“This new rules package, I thought it was tremendous,” Brad said. “The cars fell off a lot at the end of the run and you really have to drive them sideways. It took a lot of balance as a driver, a lot of precise footwork and accuracy with where you want to put your car and how to place it—which is exactly what we want. This shouldn’t be easy. This is the Sprint Cup Series, the cars should be hard to drive.”

Phoenix brings a new challenge entirely as the first one-mile track of the season. It’s a track that Brad has run consistently at over the course of his career, but has never conquered. BK does boast seven Top 10s and four Top 5s, but no wins on PIR’s 1.022-mile tri-oval.

All seven of those Top 10s have come in the last four years, with the only run outside the Top 10 during that time being a 11th place finish late in the 2013 season. He’s also led 115 laps at Phoenix over the last four years, including at least one lap in all but one of the last eight races on the Arizona desert oval.

“Phoenix has been a pretty good track for us the last half dozen or so times we’ve run it,” Kes said. “We’ve run up front, led laps, or at least been solid Top 5, solid Top 10s and we want to keep that streak going.

He’ll look to add another strong finish to his track record in the desert, and as the No. 2 crew takes the next step in the season, BK hopes NASCAR will look at doing the same. He talked at length after his win last weekend about the new aero package, and explained that, as the season goes along, the engineers heading up NASCAR’s top teams will squeeze every drop of speed they can out of the new package until the playing field is leveled again.

“As far as the downforce package is concerned, we have to continue to stay ahead of that as a sport,” Brad said. “To continue to have great finishes to races as we did today, and quite a few passes for the lead. I think that’s what we’ve all come to expect from this mile-and-a-half racing. I think that’s what we saw, which is something to be proud of.”

So far it’s the JGR and Stewart-Haas groups leading the pack at Phoenix, but the Team Penske trio isn’t too far behind. Brad was 11th quickest in Friday’s opening practice session while Logano ran third quickest and Blaney was right behind BK in 12th.

The speed deserted Brad in qualifying, however. After running eighth quickest in the first round, with a 26.304 second lap at an average speed of 136.681 mph, the Deuce ran an almost identical lap in round two while most others were significantly faster. That left Brad back in 19th, failing to reach the final round of knockout qualifying. He’ll start Sunday’s race in P19, while Logano and Blaney, who both made it to the final round, will start in 9th and 12th respectively. BK left the garage on Friday hoping to take a thing or two from the No. 22 and No. 21 teams that the No. 2 crew can apply to their car.

“We haven’t been exactly where we want to be speed-wise this weekend but we haven’t been in race trim yet, so I’m optimistic about that,” Kes said Friday evening. “My teammates have been really fast, so there’s some things to be learned from there and hopefully we can apply them.”

The adjustments to the Alliance Truck Parts Ford didn’t take for Saturday’s first practice, which saw BK run 21st quickest. But just a few hours later it seemed the team had finally found their speed. As a result, the No. 2 car was seventh fastest in final practice, putting them in good position headed into Sunday’s race. Brad isn’t sure how much the momentum from last week’s win will carry over into this week’s race, but one thing he’s confident in is the performance of the 2 Crew, which was a key to his win.

“These tracks are so different that there’s not a lot to really compare,” he said. “I’m not sure a lot of it carries over, other than my pit crew, which was blazing fast last week and made my life a lot easier.”

The Good Sam 500 will go green shortly at 3:44 p.m. ET on Sunday and can be seen on FOX.

The post BK Takes Next Step After First Win of 2016 appeared first on BradRacing.com | The Official Web Site of Brad Keselowski www.bk30beta.www.bk30beta.bradracing.com.

The Deuce has finished in the top 10 in each of the last six races, a streak that matched Brad’s longest of the season, but what that streak is missing is a win and Kes feels the time is right to add it Saturday night in the Irwin Tools Night Race.

“The team has worked diligently to bring fast reliable cars to the track every weekend and Bristol is a place where that effort has paid off for us,” Brad said. “Going back to the beginning, Team Penske has had a lot of success over the years at Bristol. Rusty

[Wallace] was great here and we’ve just continued to build on that success.”

Indeed, Team Penske and the No. 2 car have a tremendous history of success at Bristol. From 1991-2005, Rusty Wallace drove the Deuce to victory lane seven times at Thunder Valley. Kurt Busch took over the ride in 2006 and won his first run at Bristol in the No. 2 car. Since taking over the wheel of the Deuce in 2011, Brad has four Top 5 finishes, including back-to-back wins in August of 2011 and March of 2012.

That August 2011 win under the lights at Bristol stands out to Brad as one of the most iconic of the 17 Sprint Cup Series wins he’s tallied in his career, and he’d love nothing more than to add to that total on Saturday night by becoming a three-time champ at The Last Great Colosseum.

but he’s won twice at Bristol Motor Speedway. His recent finishes of ninth, seventh and even second place won’t cut it when Kes races under the lights in the Irwin Tools Night Race on Saturday.

“I feel fortunate to have won the night race once,” Brad said, “and I really would like to do it again this weekend in our Miller Lite Ford.”

Though Brad has that history of success at Bristol on his mind, he also enters Saturday’s race knowing that it’s been more than three years since he’s been to Bristol Victory Lane and his results have been mixed since.

Kes has finished in the Top 5 at Bristol in over a third of his Cup Series runs there, but in six races at BMS since his victory in the 2012 Food City 500, Brad has more finishes of 30th or worse (3) than he does in the Top 10 (2). Still, over the past three races in Thunder Valley, Kes has led a total of 86 laps. Most recently, he finished second to teammate Joey Logano in last year’s Irwin Tools Night Race, but this past April, he wrecked out of the Food City 500 just 20 laps in and was forced to settle for a 35th place finish.

Despite those mixed results, however, the Deuce driver continues to put himself in position to win on the World’s Fastest Half Mile, where he hasn’t qualified outside the Top 12 since March of 2011. In the nine races since, including Saturday’s, his average starting position is just outside the Top 5, which is precisely where he’ll start this Saturday night, in P6.

Kes and the No. 2 crew worked their way up to that spot on Fast Friday, after running ninth quickest in opening practice and just 16th best in Happy Hour. But the Deuce was fastest when it counted, putting BK on Row 3 for the start of Saturday night’s Irwin Tools Night Race.

The Miller Lite Ford has outperformed its starting position in each of the last six races, and if Kes can keep that streak going, it could be a big night for the No. 2 crew.

The Irwin Tools Night Race marks the 24th race of the season in the Sprint Cup Series and Brad currently sits in fifth in the Sprint Cup standings, just one point back of Martin Truex Jr. in fourth. Although he hasn’t won a race since the Auto Club 400 in March, BK has proven time and again over the last several weeks that he has one of the fastest cars on the track this Sprint Cup season. The Deuce has finished as one of the top 10 cars in 62 percent of the races.

It’s clear Brad has the crew and the car to move even further up the Sprint Cup standings on Saturday night. Once again, for the No. 2 crew, it all comes down to execution.

Coverage of the 2015 Irwin Tools Night Race begins at with Countdown to Green at 7 p.m. on NBC Sports Network and the green flag on Saturday night’s race under the light is set to wave at 7:45 p.m. ET.

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First, I felt bad for him. I take no pleasure in seeing anyone get injured. I suffered a similar injury earlier in my career off a similar hit, and I can still feel the pain of it from time to time.

Second, I was kind of bummed that he was sidelined because I wanted to race against him. I race in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series because I want to compete against the best drivers in the world. That’s what being a true competitor is all about. Kyle is one of the best, and in some ways, it takes away from every driver’s accomplishments if one of the best drivers isn’t in the field. If you play the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, you want to play Tom Brady. (I’m not saying Kyle Busch is Tom Brady, but you get my point.)

DESPITE OUR DIFFERENCES, I CONSIDER KYLE BUSCH ONE OF THE BEST DRIVERS IN THE SPORT AND I ENJOY RACING AGAINST HIM.

More than anything, though, not having Kyle around actually made me think about our relationship. Our rivalry is pretty well documented. We’ve made comments about each other that have made headlines. But the strange thing is that we actually have more in common than you’d think. When it comes to the way we race, Kyle and I share a lot of similarities. Our paths to the Cup series, in many ways, were also pretty similar.

Yet somehow, we’ve never had much of a relationship at all. I’m not sure why, and quite honestly, I wish things were different.

FIRST MEETING

Kyle and I first crossed paths in August 2001 at Indianapolis Raceway Park, but I’d heard about him well before that.

Back in 2000, Roush Racing had won the truck championship, and their team — which was very successful — was based out of Michigan. In 2001, they were looking for new drivers. I was 17 years old, and I wanted to be one of their drivers in the worst possible way. My family, as I mentioned in previous blog entries, had a truck team — K Automotive — but we were hampered by a lack of resources. I’d been having some success racing in late models on my own, but if I wanted to get to the next level, I needed a real shot. To my mind, Roush was it.

Roush did what was called a Gong Show. Essentially they’d bring in half a dozen drivers — all young, up and coming prospects — take them to two or three racetracks, and let them run and see who was the best. The crew chiefs would vote on who was the best driver, and that guy would get to drive the next season. It was really an interesting concept that was far ahead of its time, even for today.

I didn’t get invited. At the time, I figured it was because of my age. I was sure that I was the right guy to get at least an opportunity. I simply wasn’t old enough to get a chance. I could live with that. Then I saw Kyle Busch had won the Gong Show. He was 16.

It ate me alive.

By August 2001 in Indianapolis, Kyle had been competing for Roush’s truck racing team. I was working for K Automotive in whatever capacity the team needed — mechanic, engineer, crew member, floor sweeper. We were both Ford truck teams — the two best truck teams in Michigan, actually — and had a rivalry that was unheard of outside of Charlotte. We had been competing against each other all year, and we had been beating them. They actually weren’t running great at that time they put Kyle in. We were ahead of them in points, but only just by a little bit.

Because teams line up at the track by point order, we were actually parked right next to Roush that day, their trailer parked just below ours. I walked out of our hauler, and right there before me was Kyle, sitting just outside his. No one else was around.

I remember looking at him and being stone cold jealous. Still, I tried to tell myself to be the bigger person. It wasn’t easy. Finally, I walked over to him and said, “Hello.”

He looked at me, gave me kind of a stare, and never said a word. So I walked away.

It was one of the first times I’d ever tried to be bigger than my own jealousy and disappointment. Kyle had wound up feeding both, and he definitely didn’t know it. In fact, he probably doesn’t remember that exchange at all. But it actually affected me quite a bit.

I wasn’t a mature 17 year-old, and I was still really struggling with my lack of success and opportunities. It was the first time I’d ever tried to put myself out there with another driver like that, and in my mind, I’d gotten burned.

That first experience with Kyle impacted a lot more than my interactions with him. It shaped the way I dealt with other drivers from that point forward. In some ways, it probably still does.

THE RACES

What has made a lot of our battles significant is that they’ve come when we’ve been racing for the win.

My first time racing against him, something similar happened. It was a truck race at Bristol in 2006, the O’Reilly Auto Parts 200. I was in a low-level truck, and he had already had some success at the Cup level. Nothing had changed from our exchange five years earlier, and I’d kind of written that off as a one-time thing between two strangers.

I was running in practice, and Kyle was really fast. So I went up to Kyle, who was sitting on the pit wall, and asked for some advice in between practice sessions. I honestly don’t even remember what I wanted to know — probably something about the track that a more experienced driver could impart to a less experienced one. Whatever I asked, he gave me a one word answer — something like, “Yeah” — and turned his back. That was it.

I finished that race in 34th after having engine problems. Kyle finished sixth.

After that, nearly all our interactions came on the track. There were a lot of memorable ones, but a few stick out for how they shaped our rivalry. What has made a lot of our battles significant is that they’ve come when we’ve been racing for the win.

In 2012 at Watkins Glen, we had an incident where we ultimately just disagreed about what happened. He was really upset about it. I didn’t agree with his version, he didn’t agree with my version. Essentially, there was oil on the track during the race. He drove into the corner, slid through the oil, and drove off the track. I did not, and I was right behind him. I stayed on the track. When he merged back on the track I was underneath him, and we were approaching a corner. As we reached the corner, he just turned down as though I wasn’t there. His take on it was that I never really established position. My take on it was that he went off track, and he needed to reestablish his position.

Who’s to say who was right and who was wrong? It just was what it was.

In the end, he was spun out and I went on to finish second. I know that didn’t sit well with him. A few weeks later at Loudon, right before qualifying, I pulled him aside to talk about what had happened, and he just flew off the handle. There was definitely a high level of animosity over the race that might persist even to this day.

In 2013, things escalated. After winning the championship in 2012, I had decided to race a little differently. At the time, I had in my mind that if I treated my peers the way I wanted to be treated — instead of just racing the way I wanted to race — they would respect me for it.

Early in the year at a Bristol Cup race, we were battling for second late in the race. My car had been faster than his, but he’d run me really hard. I couldn’t get by him without wrecking him. The leader was right in front of us, so who knows — maybe I would have been able to catch him if I’d gotten past Kyle. But I ended up finishing behind him. I didn’t wreck him even though I had the opportunity to do so several times. I understood and respected why he was racing me so hard. Sure, I wanted him to let me go so I could go win the race, but that’s not racing. I was okay with that.

Later that season, back at Watkins Glen, I caught up to Kyle on the last lap. I made a move on him, and he blocked it, which again, was his responsibility. I could easily have wrecked him and won, but I didn’t want to. He won, and I finished second with a faster car. And again, that was frustrating, but I thought that was fair racing.

Then came the Nationwide race at Kansas that fall.

We were running second and third, trailing Matt Kenseth, but Matt didn’t have enough gas to make it the rest of the way without a caution. If the yellow came out, Matt was going to make it on gas, if the yellow didn’t come out, he wasn’t. Kyle was faster than I was, and he ran me down from behind. He got beside me to try to pass me, but I wouldn’t let him go. Instead, I kept positioning myself on the race track so he couldn’t get any air to his car. As a result, his car would slide around really badly, and he couldn’t complete the pass. But he was faster, no doubt about it.

We went through a seesaw battle for probably three or four laps. But eventually, Kyle got tired of racing me, and he intentionally wrecked me off of turn four. I spun off the track and backed the car into a wall. It tore the rear off of it, and ended my day.

I was pretty upset about it. I knew I had raced him hard. I felt like that was my job. I’d also avoiding wrecking him all year when I easily could have done it, and gotten myself a win. The first opportunity he’d had to wreck me, he did. He wrecked me. It seemed like a double standard.

(As it turned out, the two times I decided not to wreck Kyle kept me from making the Chase in 2013.)

The next day before driver introductions, I tried to approach Kyle, but he wouldn’t talk to me. So I walked right up to him anyway and said, “I hope you’re looking forward to next the four or five weeks.” Then I explained, in so many words, that I was going to make things hard on him for the rest of the season.

That was our last real interaction.

NEXT STEPS

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is whether I still think Kyle Busch is an ass. I made that comment at Bristol in 2010 a day after Kyle wrecked me in a Nationwide race. I was angry at the time, and that comment reflected exactly how I felt. It’s also been awhile since then, and I’m trying to move past it.

I have a lot of respect for what Kyle does in a race car. The pure competition aspect of racing is what motivates me the most — more than money, status, or other ancillary things. It’s what I love about racing, and why I want to compete at the Cup level.

And again, it’s why I want Kyle back on the track.

I BELIEVE THE SPIRITED COMPETITION OF RACING AGAINST KYLE BRINGS OUT THE VERY BEST IN ME AS A RACER.

Kyle runs an extremely fast paced race. He makes very aggressive traffic moves, and more times than not, he succeeds a higher percentage of the time than anyone who makes those moves. If he was a poker player, he’d be the guy that goes all in on a pair of twos and wins. That’s just who he is. When you win that way, it’s really impressive.

One day, I imagine both of us will kind of open our eyes, and realize that there’s really no need for everything that has and hasn’t happened between the two of us. I’ve had moments where I’ve been jealous of him. Maybe he’s had the same kinds of moments about me — I don’t know. But hopefully, one day, we’ll be able to get along. When it comes to racing, it seems like we have too much in common not to. I just have to believe that eventually, we’ll get past everything that we’ve been through, and get to someplace better.

I’m looking for ways to get there. Maybe this is one of them.

In the meantime, congrats on the coming addition to your family, Kyle, and get well soon.

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