The Round of 12 didn’t start off the way Kyle Busch and Richard Childress Racing were envisioning.
The No. 8’s AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 400 came to an end on Lap 74, when he lost control in Turns 1 and 2 slid into the wall.
“I have no idea,” Busch told NBC Sports at the infield care center of what happened to cause the spin. “It felt really good when we came off of pit road after that green-flag stop.
“The car had good grip in it. We had those couple of yellows back-to-back and we restarted on the outside. I felt like I had a flat right front (tire) and I was going to come to pit road. I second-guessed it and said ‘I don’t think so, man. It’s just something is wrong, something isn’t right, but it’s not a flat’.
“And just all on its own, just turned into the bottom of the race track in turn one and it just swapped ends on me. That’s the rear, not the front, not having grip. I just don’t know.”
Busch first encountered an issue as he slid up out of the groove a few laps prior, but regrouped and was turning lap times similar to the leaders. It was just a few laps later that he was reversing around the entire track to pit road, where the No. 8 team eventually decided to retire the car for the day.
“I felt like our car was for sure a top-five or top-10 car today. That right there, I just said it two laps before that – I got up on the high-side and was like, you know what, I just need to stop and just run the bottom, make laps here, just finish the stage and it swaps ends on me.”