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NASCAR CAMPING WORLD TRUCK SERIES: ECOBOOST 200

November 18, 2016

Homestead, Florida

THE MODERATOR: We're joined now by our 2016 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series owner champion, Kyle Busch, owner of Kyle Busch Motorsports. This is your fourth consecutive and fifth all‑time NASCAR Camping World Truck Series owner's championship. You have the first team in NASCAR Camping World Truck Series history to win four consecutive championships, and your five titles are the most in series history, as well. Clearly there's a pretty solid record of consistent, excellent performance there, so talk a little bit about that and what this one means.
KYLE BUSCH: Well, it means a lot, obviously, just to have everyone at Kyle Busch Motorsports there and all the years that we've been trying to do this and trying to put five of them together, and four in a row now, it's really awesome and very special.
I just feel so bad for William and the way this point situation worked out this year and having him eliminated last week at Phoenix and not having an opportunity to come out here and race for the title. It's frustrating but yet rewarding on the same end that William and the guys, they didn't give up, they came out here and executed exactly what they wanted to do and set out to do, and that was to win an owner's championship for myself and Samantha.
Truly remarkable performance by William and Rudy this entire season. Seven wins for a rookie is remarkable, and to come out here and to win this race on the stage that was set with everybody else out there was a lot of fun to watch.

Q. Kyle, having seen William all year now and win seven races, a rookie record, what's your projection in terms of his future in the sport?
KYLE BUSCH: Well, if he stayed on my path, he'd be a hell of a lot more successful than he's going to be. (Laughter.) But he's going to do his own deal, so I wish him all the best. But truthfully, with the way that William and Rudy have both executed this year, especially with William, with him kind of being as fresh as he is and not having the experience that some of these other guys have, and to have him go out there and really excel and absorb and really take the series by storm this year has been really fun to watch.
It's kind of scary to be teaching him all the things that I'm teaching him, but I was done about three weeks ago telling him any more.
No, he's done an awful good job all season long, and it's a shame to see him move on from the Toyota/JGR/KBM family, but I wish him all the best and all the most success at Junior's next year. He's going to have a lot of fun.
THE MODERATOR: We're also joined now by our race winner, William Byron, driver of the No.9 Liberty University Toyota for Kyle Busch Motorsports. Your seventh win of the season, and also announced this evening, winner of the Sunoco Rookie of the Year award, as well, and our race‑winning crew chief, Ryan Fugle. Congratulations, and talk a little bit about your seventh win this evening.
WILLIAM BYRON: It was just amazing. We had a great truck coming here. Obviously expecting to be still in the drivers' championship, but when we came here we had a fast truck. We executed throughout the day. It was just a one‑day show today, so unloaded really fast, and Rudy just coached me up throughout practice, and we learned a lot of things before we came here to get ready from Kyle and Rudy and even Erik. It's been just a really solid day for us, and just an amazing year with these guys. They've taught me so much, and really taken me to a new level.

Q. Rudy, when you brought that trophy in here and set it on the table, it's kind of become a common occurrence here lately; talk a little bit about what that means for you to be a part of and to lead a part of this organization that's had such a consistent record of just superior performance.
RYAN FUGLE: Yeah, it's really bittersweet. I'll start with the sweet part is that's four in a row, Kyle and myself and my race team, mostly all the same guys. That's four owners' championships in a row, one drivers' championship last year, and then there's 50‑some guys and girls back at KBM. That's who that's for. They deserve it, and they all work hard in their own way. And then Kyle and Samantha, the best owners that I've ever worked for. They make everything‑‑ they make it all go around and make everything happy and make it easy.
The bitter part is this kid is the champion, and he's not going to get the big trophy. Sauter is out there; congrats to him. He won the way he was supposed to win it, but he deserves it. This was his shot at it, and he's going to progress. He's going to progress all the way to Cup shortly, and he deserves everything he gets.
But I feel‑‑ we felt, our team felt worse, terrible for him last week. We had a goal, to go win a championship, but it's tough for him knowing that he's not going to get what he deserves to get. We'll take the fruits of what we do have, seven wins and an owner's championship.

Q. William, I don't know what your expectations were personally when you started this season, but how would you sum up what you have experienced this year?
WILLIAM BYRON: I mean, it started out, I was like, man, this is going to be really hard. Backing up what Erik did last year in this truck with this team, I knew I wanted Rudy. I knew when we sat down, we went to Buffalo Wild Wings, talked a little bit, and we knew right away that we wanted to work together, and he started coaching me the first‑‑ probably the week after that. I went to the Snowball Derby and he was telling me things, and I just knew right away we had that trust level. It just started really strongly, wind tested Atlanta, and once we got to Kansas, we were in a rhythm and got that first win, and things just kind of took off from there.
Honestly, I was just hoping for one win, and that is just an expectation as a rookie. You never know what's going to happen. Thankfully this team and myself were able to step up and do well this year.

Q. Rudy, you mentioned this and William mentioned it in victory lane, but after what happened last weekend, how difficult or how not difficult was it to get your team focused on coming right back and being able to do what you did tonight?
RYAN FUGLE: The group of guys I've got, it wasn't hard. We were all pretty down for the ride back to the airplane. We all got on the airplane, I remember, and the guy sitting behind me, he goes, Hey, is this right? He showed me a picture of somebody's tweet that said, here's the owners' Chase. I'm like, okay, we've still got something to race for, and we all started saying things that I can't say here because we were all pretty bummed about what was going on, but we were all pretty happy we had something to go race for.
The focus of this group is amazing, and preparing the truck that we prepared for this week is‑‑ I'm glad we got the victory.

Q. Kyle, other Cup guys have owned teams; how hard is it to manage this team and all the responsibilities you have on the Cup side? And I know you're going to be racing for many, many, many years yourself, but is this your retirement? Is this what you want to do is be a team owner after your seat time is done many years down the road?
KYLE BUSCH: Yeah, I guess I was probably a little premature in starting it if that's my retirement gig. We're already six years in or something like that.
We've certainly come a long ways from where we started, that's for sure, and these guys have just done a tremendous job at KBM, and it's fun, and I enjoy doing what I'm doing. I enjoy coaching up some of these younger guys, although I do tell them an awful lot, but it helps them through the Truck Series, and it's fun to see their success level be as good as it is in our stuff and to carry us on to championships as well as having the opportunity for William to race for a championship this year, Erik last year, Bubba Wallace a couple years ago.
We hope that it can continue on, and we go into the future knowing that we've got Christopher Bell next year and Noah Gragson and some other guys. We'll just keep feeding these ranks of NASCAR. And what it instills for me past my retirement, I'm not exactly sure. Maybe when I'm done racing Cup, if trucks are still around, I'll go run for a truck championship and complete the trifecta. That might be kind of a fun goal, I think, to have.
RYAN FUGLE: I think Brexton might beat him by the time he retires.
KYLE BUSCH: Yeah, as soon as Brexton is done with trucks and he wins a truck championship, we're shutting the baby down. You've got about 15 years, Rudy.

Q. Kyle, just get your take real quick on Christopher Bell's race and also just this battle that he had over this Chase stretch, what advantages it gives him going into next year since he's going to be with you again?
KYLE BUSCH: Yeah, I think Christopher learning all the things he did this year, I know it's frustrating for him, too, to have or to see William be as successful as William has been and to not have that same success or to not be running nose to tail with William, but I feel like he's learned a tremendous amount. He just comes from a different background. William coming from the pavement late model background and stuff like that maybe allowed him to be more ready for the trucks than what Christopher's sprint car background allowed him to be ready for.
Having the race here this year, though, it gives Christopher that knowledge and experience of being in a dogfight there at the end with the 88 and the 17. He almost came up second in points. We were just off a little bit probably through practice and then into the race, so to learn those things about how far off he was tonight will only benefit him for next year's title run.
You know, so with the way the points are, get a win, get in the Chase, and then after that you just kind of focus on the rounds of the Chase as you need to, and I think William did a fantastic job of executing that this year, just unfortunate circumstances at Phoenix, but we had two of them that were right there throughout all the rounds, and then we got Christopher here.
Again, he was a little off in the beginning of the race, but definitely came on there at the end and got a lot better and showed a lot of perseverance of battling an ill‑handling truck early on.
THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, congratulations on a successful season, and best of luck next year.

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