Can Kyle Busch Win at Talladega and Continue an Interesting Trend?

The Talladega Superspeedway is well-known for its unpredictability. To be precise, the track has produced around 11 first-time Cup Series race winners during its NASCAR tenure. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. became the latest driver to add his name to the list during the 2017 spring race. It is also worth noting that there have been occasions where Talladega was the first win that season. So the big question is, can Kyle Busch finally bag that elusive win at Talladega?

Many classified Talladega as a “wild-card” race. In other words, not only are the playoff drivers in with a shout of a win, but it blankets the entire field.

As it turns out, Kyle Busch, Aric Almirola, and Clint Bowyer have visited Talladega’s Victory Lane before. However, in the 2020 season Martin Truex Jr. and Alex Bowman, have yet to win at Talladega or Daytona.

Interestingly, Talladega and Daytona share a streak of “firsts” for superspeedways. To be precise, the last 11 races combined have witnessed a driver scoring their first win of the season.

Can Kyle Busch finally get the monkey off his back?

It is noteworthy that William Byron extended that streak when he took his first career win at Daytona. Now Kyle Busch can take comfort in that statistic, and he is in a prime position to take a win. In other words, he is starting the Talladega race in 6th place. However, he is acutely aware of the superspeedway’s unpredictability and the fact that his opponents are no slouches.

“For us and where we’re at, we don’t have anything to lose,” admitted Kyle Busch. “We have to go race. We can’t just sit there and ride and protect a cushion like we have been able to do in the past. We’re going to be on the outside looking in, so we have to go for broke and do all we can do to get those stage wins and points and try to get a race win to automatically punch your ticket to the next round. We have been good at the superspeedway races so far this year, but none of them have turned out to be great finishes.”