NASCAR: Kyle Busch preparing for new challenges on the horizon

We spoke to Kyle Busch ahead of this weekend’s inaugural NASCAR Cup Series race at Nashville Superspeedway, a track where he has won multiple times before.

NASCAR is in the middle of its first race weekend at Nashville Superspeedway since 2011, and this race weekend is set to feature the first ever Cup Series race at the four-turn, 1.333-mile (2.145-kilometer) oval in Lebanon, Tennessee: the Ally 400.

Fresh off this past weekend’s All-Star Race, we had the chance to speak with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch, who won at Nashville Superspeedway in the Xfinity Series in 2009 and in the Truck Series in both 2010 and 2011, ahead of this Sunday afternoon’s 300-lap race.

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Nashville Superspeedway is a unique track on the NASCAR schedule; it is the only track measuring 1.333 miles in length, slightly shorter than the several cookie-cutter 1.5-mile ovals.

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But this isn’t something that the driver of the #18 Toyota, who is also set to pilot the #54 Toyota in this afternoon’s Xfinity Series race in an attempt to secure his 100th career win, is concerned about.

“I think every track is different,” Busch, who is set to debut a new Pedigree paint scheme on his #18 Toyota this weekend in an effort to promote and encourage dog adoption, told Beyond the Flag. “Even the 1.5-mile tracks that look similar are much different from each other from the driver and team point of view.”

He noted that it will still be quite interesting to drive at Nashville Superspeedway, given how long it has been since NASCAR’s most recent visit one decade ago.

“Nashville had pretty new concrete when we were there for those years,” he said. “Since we’ve not been there in a while, it will be interesting to find out what has changed and see what new bumps are there and what new things have kind of come up over the years.

“Obviously, so many advancements have been made since I was there last time. We were going pretty fast and we are bringing the low-downforce package there, and there are some things you are going to have to pick up on very quickly versus when I was there running Trucks or Xfinity cars. So we’ll see how much we can learn Saturday with our M&M’s Camry and Sunday with our Pedigree Foundation Camry in the Cup race.”

Nashville Superspeedway is one of three new tracks remaining on the regular season schedule, the other two being Road America and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. The former has hosted a Cup Series race before, but that one race was contested all the way back in 1956. The latter has never hosted the series.

“I think any new track is a challenge,” Busch admitted. “Road America should be a lot of fun, but I’ve never been there before, so I’ll have a lot to learn for sure. A lot of the young guys have raced there before in the Xfinity Series, so they’ll probably have a little bit of an advantage just knowing the track a little bit better than I will. We’ll get a chance to have practice and race with in the Xfinity Series that weekend as well, so hoping we learn a lot from that and see where we are at.”

Finally, Busch spoke about the NASCAR All-Star Race, which was held at a third different location in the last three years this past Sunday. It used to be contested annually at Charlotte Motor Speedway, but it hasn’t been held there since 2019. Last year, it was held at Bristol Motor Speedway, and on Sunday night, it was contested at Texas Motor Speedway.

Busch loves the idea of continuing to add tracks to the rotation.

“I’m a fan of only going to places once,” he said. “Would love to see us go to more race tracks, but go to the ones we do just once to spread things out. So changing things up is not a bad thing at all.”

Perhaps Nashville Superspeedway will take on that role at some point in the future.

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This Sunday’s Ally 400 is set to be broadcast live on NBC Sports Network from Nashville Superspeedway beginning at 3:30 p.m. ET.

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