Kyle Busch showed the poise and confidence that have marked his demeanor this season, and this time it was under adverse conditions.
After all, most everyone seemed certain that Busch would be the winner Sunday in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway — until the final caution came out. Then things got dicey.
Busch led 151 laps and was clearly the class of the field. His Joe Gibbs Racing team whipped through pit stops. His car slipped away from the contenders on restarts. Only Tony Stewart had anything for him over the course of the previous segment of the race.
Yet there he was, with the win on the line, and suddenly trouble loomed on his bumper.
With a handful of laps remaining, Busch and Jimmie Johnson battled for position. Then Kevin Harvick entered the fray. Busch tried to push his car, tried to hold off the pair of California natives. But his car just didn’t have the speed to match theirs.
Like the other two, he opted to stay out when others pitted on the final caution, which came out on Lap 186 of the 200, when Bobby Labonte crashed. That kept him in the front, but the bunched-up field put Johnson to his inside and Harvick right behind the pair for that final start.
And then the shot for his fourth consecutive win in a NASCAR race — and second straight weekend to sweep the Sprint Cup and Nationwide races — fell apart for Busch as first Johnson, and then Harvick, slipped past and out of his reach.
“Just real, real unfortunate and frustrating and disappointing all in one that we weren't able to seal the deal today,” Busch said. “Just come down to the last few laps there with Jimmie first and then Kevin got into it, too, with us.
“You ask a little bit more from your race car at the last moments, it doesn't have anything left to give. You're essentially a sitting duck waiting for those guys to drive by you. Couldn't get any more out of the car. That was it. It would push, get loose, that was all we had.”
Busch, 25, didn’t yell or shout or cast blame. He took the loss with a relative level of calm and went out of his way to praise those who put him in position to contend from the start.
“Today was a really, really good race for us anyways,” Busch said after a weekend in which he crashed the primary car in the first practice session and then qualified eighth shortly after in a backup car. “We had a really good race car. (I) can't thank the guys enough, everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing, chassis shop, bodies — it was a whole effort this weekend.”
He led by more than six seconds at some points in Sunday's race and actually had more than a half-a-second lead over the field before the caution came out.
During the caution laps, he and crew chief Dave Rogers debated whether they would pit or stay on the track. But with Labonte’s car keeping pit lane closed for extra laps, the top six drivers opted to remain on the track and gut it out over those final laps.
Busch was then left to wonder what might have been.
“You were kind of a sitting duck,” he said of that stop. “It was just a matter of time before they got there. You were hoping you could hold them off at least eight laps, nine laps, however many we had left green.”
Busch never gave up, though. Even as Harvick stormed toward the checkered flag, Johnson in pursuit, Busch maintained that desire to win.
That showed as he headed through the final turn en route to his third-place finish, but not in his attitude after the race. A calm Busch even flashed his sense of humor as he discussed the race that got away.
“I never got in the wall till the last lap coming, off of (Turn 4),” he said. “Figured I had nothing else better to do. Knocked the right side off the car. The guys had to fix it.
“… I knew I was too far behind. Shouldn't have been trying. But that's me. Never give up.”
