INTERVIEW: Kyle Busch on Points, Getting Started and the Long Season

Kyle Busch is one of the most talked-about figures in the sport...both good and bad. Rowdy is polarizing to some fans, a hero to others, and isn't that the way it should be?

Here, the younger Busch brother throws down on more points for winning race, the tribulations of beating Jimmie Johnson in the Chase and how long the season really is.

Q.  Brian France has talked a couple times since the season about incentivizing winning and risk taking.  Certainly that's reaction to what fans would say about what they've seen about the racing in the past.  I'm curious, what's your response when people talk about that because that's almost inferring or a suggestion that you guys aren't doing enough, that you guys aren't busting your rear end enough to go for the win.  Is that something that bothers you, being inferred in that sense, that you guys suddenly need more incentive to go win a race, or with the way the money pit plays this sport, it is needed?

KYLE BUSCH:  Yeah, it kind of doesn't make sense.  In a way you look at the points structure and you try to say, well, you need to reward winning more.  Okay, go down the list of the last five, six, seven years, who's won the most races.  It's Jimmie Johnson.  So you're going to award a guy who wins all the races more points, and he already has the consistency?  I think what you're looking at is you're trying to take away the bad days, so if you have a bad day, if you finished in the 30s or the 40s or something to that effect and you can go back the next week and you can win, essentially you're knocking back those bad finishes.  You're just increasing your average finishing position, right.

So it's not for a guy that wins a lot that needs to be incentivized to win, it's for the bad days to essentially recompensate for the lack of points that you earned on those days.

Q.  You had some bad days hurt you in the Chase.  What would that do for you if something like that happened?

KYLE BUSCH:  Yeah, it's a double-edged sword.  For me if I was able to have a couple bad days, which you don't want, but if you have a couple bad days in the Chase, for myself let's -- I don't remember what they were.  Kansas for one.  What was the other one?  Martinsville maybe was my second worst finish or something like that, 15th, 14th.  You know, so to be able to go out there, you've still got to win in the final 10 races to be able to get back those points.

But it's not really going to help you a whole lot if you've got Jimmie Johnson who's going to win two or three Chase races and finish consistently.  You're just not going to be able to overcome that.  There's a lot of teams out here that look at ourselves in the mirror and wonder why we can't do what they do, but yet we've got to try, and this is a whole new season.

Q.  As far as it's a long season, obviously; is there any part of the season that you like better than others?  Is there any part that gives you like more energy coming in?

KYLE BUSCH:  Yeah, I would admit that the beginning of the season is always just -- you're sort of the freshest.  It's a lot easier to come out of the gate and feel revived and refreshed and ready to go and tackle a whole new season.  It's a fresh start.  You're not behind in any points.  Essentially you just look to try to build as big of a margin of cushion as you can to start instead of having to be at the end of the season and come from behind.

I like the beginning of the year.  I think Daytona is Daytona.  Daytona, if you can win it, great.  It really doesn't mean a whole lot.  I think the first five races don't really mean a whole lot.  It's more about learning your team, getting a chemistry going, whether you have a new car or just the new chemistry within your team, and just being able to build, put your building blocks together in the first five weeks, and then it's on from weeks 6 to 26 essentially, so you've got 20 weeks to prove yourself and make it in the Chase.

Q.  Can you talk a little bit about Dave Wilson, since he's kind of taken the lead over from Lee White, and in the interim how he's grown in that role over the last year?

KYLE BUSCH:  Yeah, David has done a really nice job.  I think he's sort of brought a little bit more continuity to the organization with TRD.  I think the chassis and engine guys, I think they have now -- there's not a whole lot of comparison between the two where they would work together but I feel like they are working together as one more often.  I feel like the TRD guys on the truck and Nationwide level do a great job for helping those teams that are there, and of course the Cup support, as well.  Whether it's Michael Waltrip who's got 10 or 20 engineers or JGR who's got 20 or 25 engineers, there's still a need to spread out the workload, and TRD does a great job for us, and Wilson is obviously a huge part of that as well as the rest of the guys in Salisbury.

But we Wilson's role on the engine side I feel like has come along, and the beginning of the year last year started out really, really well.  I felt like we kind of tapered off a little bit towards the middle and then the end sort of got better again, too.  Sort of excited to see what the off-season brought those guys and essentially what it brings us.  But I feel like he's got a good leadership role, he's got a good direction, and we're looking forward to working with him continually.

Q.  How soon can you tell where Joe Gibbs Racing is this season?  Teams start strong, Roush-Fenway struggled last year kind of ahead of the game, Stewart-Haas Racing says they're ahead of the game from last year.  How soon can you tell?  

KYLE BUSCH:  Yeah, if there was any indication in the Charlotte test, the 4 car was ultimately the best car there.  The 42 was the second best car there.  The RCR cars, they were OK. They were kind of like us.  I don't think we were all that great.  We were essentially a 10th-place organization when we were there during that test.  It was interesting for sure with the new rules and everything the way they are.  We learned quite a bit of just what's going on with our stuff and our equipment and what we need to try to work on continually from that test until we get to say Phoenix or California or Vegas.

You know, so as far as how soon can you tell where organizations are, that's kind of like what I was mentioning earlier about the five races.  You definitely work through the first five races, you kind of try different things, you experiment a bit, and you kind of pick a package that you want to attack with and you go down that path, and that's the path you need to stick with.

Whether it's an organization or whether it's a team, the 18 team might go down a path that they feel comfortable with, where the 11 might go down another path and the 20 may go down another, and we may end up merging say week 10 or 12 or something like that.  But that's sort of how I feel like the years have gone with being at JGR, and I think it's been -- I wouldn't say more controlled, but I would say it's just been more uniform the last two or three years with the crew chiefs that we now have on board and the way that their camaraderie is and the way that they work together.