Kyle Busch was enjoying his return to ACT Late Model competition until he crashed on Thursday night in the Vermont Governor’s Cup 200 at the Thunder Road Speedbowl.
Busch was running inside the top-5 when he slapped the frontstretch wall off a Lap 114 restart. There was no cosmetic damage to his No. 51 but the contact was enough to damage the steering on his ACT-LM.
The damage ended his race.
This was after the 2015 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion spent the first half of the race fighting track position and an ill-handling but improving race car.
“Man, we started so far off with the race car and then came to where we were pretty good, pretty decent and thought we actually had a shot to win,” Busch said on Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. “I blistered a right rear tire in 21 laps of the race and ended up spinning out. Went back, got a practice tire put on to replace it, came back, got all the way back up to third I think it was and then my crew chief decided, ‘Hey, we better pit and put on our tires for the end. Otherwise we’re going to get run over,’ and I was like, ‘I got the track position now. I don’t want to have to go back there again,’ but, anyways, I listened to him and went back in traffic and worked our way back up through and I think we got up to as high as five or sixth.
“Then on a restart, I have no idea what the guy next to me was doing, but he just flat out drove right through me, put me in the frontstretch wall, which made me climb the wall and – ‘cause the wall’s off camber to the race track – so I climbed the wall and then got off the wall, spun around and everybody else missed me that was behind me in the field, but after that everything was knocked out of place with the car.
“The steering wheel wasn’t right – it didn’t feel right – and so it just – we were done for the night.”
RECAP AND RESULTS: Vermont Governor’s Cup 200
Considering the entire thing came together last minute, Busch enjoyed the experience. He was greeted by a sold out crowd at the quarter-mile short track, and had a competitive car prepped by Eric Chase, Nick Sweet and the Mad Dog Motorsports team.
“Yeah, it kind of came together really quickly,” Busch said. “It was about six, seven, eight days ago that my buddy from up here called me and said, ‘Hey, the guys at the race track want to know if you’re interested,’ and I said, ‘Okay, well, sure. What kind of car? What are we racing,’ and all that stuff and it wasn’t necessarily my favorite thing to come race in the ACT (American Canadian Tour) car, but it was fine and I just thought I’d give it a shot.
“I’d never been to Thunder Road. I had to talk the wife (Samantha Busch) into doing it and finding something for her and Brexton (son) to do while we were up here, so we got all that taken care of and went over there and got used to the race track kind of early.”
Busch won the 2011 Oxford 250 in an ACT car, and wouldn’t dismiss a return to the Gov Cup next year.
“You know, may have an opportunity to come back,” Busch said. “We’ll see. We’ll see what the race track wants to do and, you know, what will happen next year. It was certainly fun. I enjoyed it all until I got ran over, so thought I had a shot to win being where I was. The guy that ended up winning the race, he was ahead of me when we came out of the pits on that tire cycle and I passed him through that run and then was ahead of him when I got taken out there, so he ended up winning the race.
“I thought I had a shot, so maybe next time.”
