NASCAR is here. Not in Austin. It doesn’t come to Austin. It’d be cool if it came to Austin. There’s a big ol’ road course down here they use for Formula 1. I bet they use it for IndyCar too. But no, no NASCAR in Austin. Texas Motor Speedway is up in Fort Worth. You drive past it on your way towards Oklahoma City or Kansas (or beyond).
There isn’t a major storyline entering the race. We’d hope NASCAR is building one, but we never know with those guys. One subtle storyline is that Kyle Busch hasn’t had a good year. Let’s talk about that.
Kyle Busch is the reigning champion. He’s won two of the last five titles. He’s one of NASCAR’s best.
Or rather, he should be.
This year, Busch hasn’t even won a stage. He’s eleventh in the standings, fairly safe to make the playoffs with nine regular season races remaining, and he has seven top-five finishes, tied for third-most on the circuit, but he hasn’t done much winning, and when you don’t win—even just a stage here and there—you set yourself up to where Busch would be 37 points behind Kevin Harvick if the playoffs started today (in addition to making the playoffs by winning races, drivers get a head start in the playoffs for race wins and stage wins).
What’s going wrong? I have no idea. I don’t know that much about NASCAR. But it seems like he’s frustrated. And after yesterday, when he won the truck race and seemingly won the minor league race only to be disqualified when his car failed the post-race inspection, today’s set up to either alleviate that frustration or double down on it.
Hopefully, the frustration boils over. The ideal happening, from a narrative standpoint, is a fight. This is always the goal. And Kyle Busch has managed to get himself into at least two fights over the years: one of which, in 2011, consisted of opposing-team owner Richard Childress beating him up at the age of 65.
Fingers crossed we get some fists. No serious injuries, though, of course.
