KYLE BUSCH, Driver of the No. 18 Skittles Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing:
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Do you feel like you have a good notebook with the new car configuration that you can take back to Pocono and be successful with it?
“I’d like to think so. We were pretty good there last time. There were a couple of guys who were as fast as we were. It was kind of hard to pass in certain situations. There were some unique opportunities on restarts that didn’t really seem to present themselves like we all expected them to. Past all that, for as good as we were, we’re not going back with the PJ1 being sprayed on lane two in all three corners or lane two and three in all three corners, so that’ll be a different variable than we’ve had there in the past, and we’ll just have to play it all out and see what happens when we get there. Typically at those places, and like any mile-and-a-half that we go to where you have to get out of the gas just a little bit, it seems like us – the 18 – all the (Joe) Gibbs (Racing) cars, we can run OK with those guys. But anywhere that we go that you have to run wide open all the way around, like Kansas or Chicago, we sort of struggle and there are some other teams that are better than us. Like California, we were super-fast because you had to get out of the gas and play with it some, and then Pocono was that same way, so we were really fast there. So I feel good about that, at least, going back with our Skittles Camry.”
How do you think the PJ1 will affect Pocono?
“I don’t know if it will. You would like to think that it’s going to present more opportunities to just get out of the wake of the guy in front of you. I think what we’re expecting it to do is, if you go off into the corner and you follow somebody, you have to lose ground to them in order to maintain the same line that they’re running. You can’t gain on them following them. You have less downforce. You’re just not going to make that time. If you can offset yourself wider than them, you can at least maintain that gap and you can come off the corner kind of with a little bit of a momentum from the high side that it typically gives you. Then you can make a run on the straightaways and you have a chance to be able to race with the guy you’re following and you don’t just have to be stuck behind him. That’s the theory, anyway. We’ll see how that works.”
What’s the trickiest part about racing at Pocono?
“Trying to pass people is the trickiest part because it’s so finicky there after getting your car setup to run by yourself in practice, but also getting it good for the traffic during the race and being able to out-corner guys out there. Having a lot of horsepower is important there, as well. Hoping we can have all of those things go right for us this week with our Skittles Toyota. We won this race last year with a good car and some good calls by Adam Stevens up on the pit box. Mars Confectionary U.S. is just down the road and I know we will have a lot of Mars associates out at the track rooting us on. We’d like to get another win there in their backyard.”
Since the track is unique, where is the best place to make a pass at Pocono?
“Most of your passing is going to be done probably through turn one and off of turn one and getting into turn two, and if somebody can get a good run off of turn two, get back up high and get in line to get on that patch, getting into turn three. Besides that, in turn one, we just can’t get the cars to turn down there because there’s so much load on the bump stops from going 210 mph down the front straightaway and then trying to slow it down to about a ‘buck-40’ (140 mph). Turn two is kind of bumpy and kind of rough. There are different areas where you’ve got to maneuver through the tunnel turn to get your car right. If you miss it just by a little bit, you tend to knock the wall down off the corner, so it’s tight.”
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