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MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES: PENNZOIL 400 PRESENTED BY JIFFY LUBE

March 4, 2018

Kyle Busch

Las Vegas, Nevada

THE MODERATOR: We will begin with Las Vegas native, Kyle Busch, driver of the No.18 M&M's Caramel Toyota. It's your sixth Las Vegas top‑five, another great run. You're in here a lot and with good reason. Can you talk about the race you had, please?
KYLE BUSCH: Yeah, we had a good race. We just were off a little bit there in the beginning of the race with the cycle tires from qualifying. We just didn't have it early on, just super, super loose, but Adam and the guys made some great adjustments to flip that and be on the tight side for the majority of the rest of the day, but at least it was drivable and we could start making some passes and making some gains on people, especially on long runs when they would get loose, our car would kind of come to life and be super fast, probably lap 20 on into a run.
You know, just had a decent day, I guess. Certainly would have liked to have been able to run down the 4 or catch the 4 and put on a race, but they were just so far out there and so far class of the field all day long, I don't think anybody was really keeping up with them. Proud of our effort and what we were able to do here today, and we'll go to Phoenix.

Q. Kyle, when a driver has a car like Kevin had today, can you do anything during the race, adjustments, throw wild stuff at him to try to catch up when they obviously are so far ahead?
KYLE BUSCH: No, our balance was really, really good there the last 100 laps of the race. I don't think we could have made much ground by changing anything much. It was just pure speed. Whether it's under the hood or whether it's aerodynamics or whatever it is, you know, they've obviously got it going on right now, and we just missed it a little bit. You know, we kind of fought track position all day. Every restart I didn't have a very good restart. I would lose track position on restarts, so that wasn't helpful.
But our car was obviously always better in the long run anyways. So if you can't fire off on the short run, you do lose those positions but then you make them back, it's just all about trying to make that back plus some, and we never got that plus some.

Q. Harvick has said that maybe the Hawkeye system and also the change in the splitter rules has kind of brought everybody or has helped them. Have you noticed any change in the way your car drives this year compared to last year?
KYLE BUSCH: I would agree with Harvick. I think that‑‑ I think he's right in the sense that the OSS‑‑ I think that that's definitely brought people closer together. I think the splitter rule has obviously brought people closer together. There were some guys that were really, really aggressive with that stuff and they were really good, and there were guys that weren't so aggressive with it that maybe kind of showed a little bit slower speed, but they were fast the way they were last year, and that's translated into faster than some of the guys that had that taken away this year. Definitely some of the rule changes has leveled some things out.

Q. You were able to give the autographed helmet to the one October family; won the trucks, had such a great run here. Was this any different than coming home before or was this a different trip because of things like that and what had happened here?
KYLE BUSCH: Yeah, I mean, Vegas strong. It's certainly a cool opportunity to come out here and put on a good show in front of the hometown fans. I certainly wish Saturday was better than what it was. We just were so far off and the race was so short, we just didn't have time to get it back.
But overall, Friday and today were really good runs for us and had some fun while we were out there. It was great to meet that family spend the few minutes that we did out there on stage and be able to give them a token of our appreciation and sadness for their loss that they had. Obviously nothing will ever bring back their son, but it's a little something to try to give them some joy about being able to spend the day out here at the speedway and just have that remembrance of having fun.

Q. What's your greatest takeaway today?
KYLE BUSCH: I think the biggest takeaway is just the way the race kind of transitioned. It was a 400‑mile race. The race when we come back here in the fall/late summer is going to be a 400‑mile race, so the adjustments in the things that we were making today are definitely going to be useful for what's going to happen when we come back. I think the track is going to be a lot slower when we come back for the summer race with the heat and everything else, but just learning how the track kind of moved around and the different lines that we were all running and stuff, it seemed like you can go about anywhere on the racetrack.
You know, again, this place has finally kind of aged a little bit where you can move all around and all over, and it's no longer one of those new repaves, so it feels pretty good.

Q. Just to remind us, are you going to run the triple header again in September?
KYLE BUSCH: I'm not allowed to, no. Just the Cup race.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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