DOVER, Del. – Welcome back to the NASCAR Cup Series top five, Kyle Busch.
A fourth-place finish at Dover Motor Speedway on Sunday (April 28) gave Busch and the No. 8 team their first top five since the now-iconic three-wide photo finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Busch took the bronze in that race, his only top five of the season until Dover.
Busch’s weekend got off to a great start when he qualified on the pole for the race, his first since last season’s race at World Wide Technology Raceway (a race he ended up winning). He led 34 laps en route to scoring stage points in both stages.
For the large majority of the race, Busch never left the top five and kept the leaders in his sights. On the final green flag pit stop, Busch had a good enough stop to potentially contend for the win before a caution came out in the middle of the cycle.
“If we could’ve maintained third, […] we might have had something for the front two,” Busch said. “But that wasn’t to be. We had to come back down and restart eighth.”
On the final run, Busch surged from eighth to fourth, where he would stay for the rest of the day. The Las Vegas native thought that he could have finished better for the way his day gone.
“Could’ve been one spot better,” Busch said. “But still not a win.”
While the finish was much needed for Busch and his season, he was still frustrated with the amount of aero blocking that occurred, especially late in the race.
Despite its presence throughout NASCAR’s history, aero blocking has become a big issue as of late. Recently, it seems that a lot more races and positions have been decided by drivers taking lines that disrupt the air of the driver challenging them for position.
The Dover race itself was decided by Denny Hamlin using aero blocking effectively to hold off a hard-charging Kyle Larson in the final laps.
Busch encountered two distinct instances of aero blocking on his final charge through the field. First, he was held up by Noah Gragson while racing the No. 10 for position.
When asked if it was due to aero blocking, Busch simply replied, “Yup.”
Later, Busch…
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