As frustrations mount, Kyle Busch, Bubba Wallace face uphill battles in playoff push

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LEBANON, Tenn. — Just when it looks like Kyle Busch is going to catch a break in a season where he hasn’t had his typical speed to consistently challenge for wins, he ends up in the infield medical center. 

“We just have to stop the bleeding,” Busch said the day before Sunday’s race at Nashville Superspeedway. “I think I’ve been saying that for the last six months. It hasn’t stopped. And the last weeks, it’s been gushing pretty hard.”

And while knowing his team isn’t performing on all cylinders, he added: “I’ve been getting run into every week.”

Well, Busch found a new way to get wrecked — Kyle Larson ran out of gas in front of him at Nashville, leaving Busch with nowhere to go. 

The frustrations continue to mount for Busch and Bubba Wallace, the two most high-profile drivers who made the playoffs last year and now pretty much need a win over the final eight regular-season races to make the playoffs.

Wallace sits the first one outside the bubble — but is 51 points behind Alex Bowman for the final spot. Chase Briscoe is 78 points behind and then there’s Busch at 104 points back. 

“We’re missing a little bit from last year — just feelwise, it’s kind of been our M.O. the last month or so we’ve just been so close to hitting it,” Wallace said prior to the race Sunday. “But then we try to do one thing and it goes the opposite way.

“We’ve just got to really dig deep, throw our heads together. We have a lot of smart people on this team.”

That is the way both 23XI Racing (Wallace’s team) and Richard Childress Racing (Busch’s team) feel. They know they need to dig and claw and hope that it’s enough.

“I mentioned to him this week that you have just a handful of races that we have got to get it done,” 23XI Racing co-owner and Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin said. “It certainly means a lot to us to make the playoffs and certainly to him to make the playoffs. We expect that from our cars, so they know they’ve got to perform.

“Whenever they don’t get the results they’re hoping for each week, it does get frustrating. You either get frustrated, mad and make more mistakes or you go to work, and you get better. I think that’s the attitude he’s going to take.”

The frustration has continued to mount for Busch, and his team owner, Richard Childress, called a shop meeting Tuesday in an attempt to change the attitude.

“We need to change the culture,” Childress aid. “We need to have more racers.”

Childress expressed confidence in Busch, the two-time Cup champion who joined the team last year.

“I feel as strong about Kyle Busch as I did when he became a part of this company a year-and-a-half ago,” Childress said. “I feel as good about that. We’ve got to change some things. You’ll see it.”

One of the changes was that executive vice president of competition Andy Petree retired. Childress said Petree “did a good job for us” and named Keith Rodden as the interim competition director. Petree won two Cup titles as a crew chief for Dale Earnhardt at RCR.

“Change sometimes lends itself to an open opportunity, hopefully for the better,” Busch said. “I respect the hell out of Andy and what he’s done and what he’s done in this sport, and the legacy that he holds.

“We had a lot of fun together and some good laughs and some good relationships. Hopefully, we can better our program without him there and carry on in the future.”

Rodden said Busch remains engaged in working with the team and looking for ways to make the cars faster. The issue for Busch is that he doesn’t have the speed and comfort in the car.

“Just the feel is not there for me,” Busch said. “The more comfortable you are, the more positions you can put yourself in and take chances. I feel like I’m having a hard enough time making laps on my own to ever think about trying to make a pass on someone.”

Busch won three races in his first 15 races at RCR. Now he’s been winless in his last 40. 

“We need to be winning races,” Rodden said. “We’re a top-tier Chevrolet team and we owe it to all our partners to win. Part of changing the narrative and changing the culture of RCR is it has a rich history of winning, and we need to get there.

“This the same group that won three races last year and everybody’s already forgotten, These guys know how to win. They know how to get the car together. … We don’t need to just hit the panic button. We just need to get the car under him to where he can run.”

For Wallace, he just has not run as well as he did last year.

“[It’s] a little bit of both [speed and handling],” Wallace said. “I’ve tried to come into this year way more prepared than I have been, studying more film, being more attentive in the meetings and just asking, I  would think, more of the right questions and just asking more questions in general.

“It’s hard, man. We’re fighting for thousandths of an inch. That’s what it’s all about.”

Wallace acknowledged that all teams have smart people, and that’s what is driving him to try to make this playoff push.

“You’re going up against the best of the best,” Wallace said. “And that’s what makes you show up the following week is when you do get beat, you got things to work on and it’s the competition side of things.

“So as much as we’re off — it’s not much, but it’s just enough to keep us working hard and trying to find out what it is to get us back to where how we ran last year.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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