NASCAR Cup Series: Kyle Busch says Dover package ‘sucked’

Kyle Busch claims that the rules package used by the NASCAR Cup Series for the Gander RV 400 at Dover International Speedway “sucked”.

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch had his worst race of the 2019 NASCAR Cup Series season from start to finish in Monday’s Gander RV 400 at Dover International Speedway, which was the 11th of 36 races on this year’s schedule.

The 34-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada native qualified for this race in 22nd place in his #18 Toyota and started in 20th after two of the drivers who qualified ahead of him were sent to the rear of the field as a result of the fact that they failed pre-race inspection twice.

Busch spent much of the 400-lap race around the four-turn, 1.0-mile (1.609-kilometer) high-banked Dover International Speedway oval in Dover, Delaware in the bottom half of the top 10 and sometimes slightly outside of it.

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When the checkered flag flew, Busch was the second to last driver on the lead lap in 10th place, which tied his worst finish of the season so far. He also finished in 10th in the season’s seventh and 10th races at Texas Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway, respectively, but his performances in these two races as a whole were not nearly as lackluster as his performance in the Gander RV 400 was.

But while he tied Morgan Shepherd’s record for the most consecutive top 10 finishes to start a season in Cup Series history with 11, Busch was not happy following this race, particularly with the rules package that was utilized. This package included 750 horsepower in the engines of the cars and higher downforce levels, downforce levels that increased the speeds in the center of the turns by roughly 17 miles per hour compared to where they were last season.

Here is what Busch had to say about the matter to reporters following his worst performance of the season thus far, according to RACER.

"“The package sucks. No [expletive] question about it. It’s terrible. But all I can do is bitch about it and it will fall on deaf ears and we’ll come back here with the same thing in the fall.”"

The race featured a total of 15 lead changes among 11 drivers, and there were several lengthy stints during which the leaders, no matter who they were, seemed untouchable in clean air and checked out from the rest of the field.

One of Busch’s three teammates, Martin Truex Jr., won the race by 9.501 seconds, nearly a half a lap, over second place finisher Alex Bowman of Hendrick Motorsports, and barring a late caution flag period, this result was never really in doubt during the second half of the race’s third and final stage.

That said, Truex Jr. and Bowman were the two drivers who originally qualified ahead of Busch in 13th and fifth place, respectively, but were sent to the back of the field for the start of the race as a result of the fact that they failed pre-race inspection twice. They finished the race in first and second after starting in 35th and 34th, so passing certainly wasn’t impossible by any stretch of the imagination, and there was a lot of great racing throughout the field.

What are your thoughts on the rules package used in the Gander RV 400 at Dover International Speedway? Does NASCAR need to make changes to this package moving forward for future Cup Series races at the Monster Mile?