A late-race caution during the preseason Busch Light Clash on Saturday night presented an enticing opportunity for Kyle Busch to seize victory from leader Denny Hamlin. However, despite a strong effort, two laps of overtime proved insufficient for Busch to overtake Hamlin, who capitalized on a solid restart.
As the two-lap overtime began, Hamlin quickly established a lead, forcing Busch to defend against challenges from Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano before refocusing on Hamlin.
Reflecting on the race, Busch described his final restart, stating, “I got a decent restart on the final one, and then I got a pretty good Turns 1 and 2. He kept having issues off left-front lockup and sliding off the bottom pretty bad, so I knew that was going to open up the door for an opportunity.”
Busch, who has consistently performed well in all three Clash events at the coliseum, recounted his attempt to make a move on Hamlin. He noted, “I got to his side off the middle of Turn 2, but I just never had any acceleration off the corners. I could not get my forward momentum started. So that was kind of my hindrance. As bad as Hamlin was on entry, I was as bad on exit. If we could have had three, four more laps or whatever, I felt like I would have had enough to be able to get close enough to make a move.”
Ultimately, Busch secured a second-place finish, expressing a degree of frustration with the outcome. “Second, third, second kind of hurts. I don’t know what it really is. It’s just tight nature, tight bullring kind of stuff, the things we all grow up doing with legends cars, late models, all that,” he commented.
Despite his success at the L.A. Coliseum, Busch acknowledged his team’s challenges on short tracks in the past year. While he achieved three victories in his first season with Richard Childress Racing, his only top-10 finish on short tracks was a third place in the fall Richmond race. Busch admitted, “We’ve got a little bit of work on our short track program. Clash seems okay, but we’ll try to figure out the rest of the year.”