Two back-to-back solid finishes – strike while the iron is hot, Kyle Busch! The No. 8 Chevrolet driver seems back in his glorious game as he grabbed a front-row spot again. After a strategic and well-planned pit call landed him among the leaders in Michigan, Busch almost won. At Daytona as well, he came dangerously close to snapping his 44-race winless streak.

Hopes were at a peak as Kyle Busch headed into the Coke Zero Sugar 400. His Daytona 500 showing earlier this year produced an average 12th-place result, but his Michigan luck gave him confidence. And Busch delivered – albeit falling just a little bit short of the victory lap.

Kyle Busch smiles to hide his regret

Well, a runner-up finish after a series of miserable runs is bound to make anyone smile. Kyle Busch, a 63-time Cup winner, bumped into an unprecedented streak of bad races, the longest in his career, this season. An endless slew of measures did little to help – ranging from pit crew shuffles to ejecting Richard Childress Racing members. However, revamping the team strategy may have started to pay off, as we saw Busch clinch 4th place in Michigan.

At Daytona International Speedway as well, Kyle Busch started 11th and wound his way to the front. Avoiding those massive, chilling wrecks was a task though, as the No. 8 driver admitted post-race. Yet we could detect a hint of lingering regret as he wound up 2nd just 0.047 seconds short of Harrison Burton. “Finished second, it’s all good. We were really, really, really lucky to miss those crashes tonight … Was hoping we could get those free No. 8 specials at @cheddarskitchen but it wasn’t meant to be. We’ll regroup and come back next week.”

The Coke Zero Sugar 400 was studded with scary wrecks. The first saw Corey LaJoie getting into Noah Gragson and collecting 17 cars in a smoking pile-up. Then Michael McDowell lost his lead and slid into Joey Logano, shortly before Josh Berry scared everyone after wrecking and flipping upside down. Even after overcoming all of those, Kyle Busch saw Harrison Burton blockading his path. His hands itched to shove him out of the way, but Busch chose restraint over Austin Dillon’s path. “Besides flat-out wrecking him, there was nothing I could do,” he said.

Busch expected nothing short of a top-five finish before the Daytona race began.

Busch is inching closer

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Rowdy’s moment of truth may be just around the corner. All we can do is manifest as passionately as we can. After winning at least one Cup race for 19 years in a row, Kyle Busch is now desperate to maintain his reputation. After his 4th-place finish at Michigan last weekend, the RCR driver expressed confidence in his post-season chances. “We could legit win Daytona,” Busch proudly declared after securing an 11th-place starting spot for the Daytona race. Yet the fear of not making the playoffs looms large as only one race is left on the Cup Series schedule.

So Kyle Busch slipped his heart-wrenching apprehensions as well. “It’s tough because, when you have done as well as you’ve done and the success and the accolades and everything that you’ve had and you get run over, beat down, all that sort of stuff, it’s hard to get yourself back up again and to go back out there. But I’ve been down before, although probably never as long or as low as this has been. It seems like the harder I work … the worse we are at the racetrack.”

But redemption seems to be simmering for the winningest driver, as he came less than a second shy of the Coke Zero trophy. Now Busch’s story may climax at the Cook Out Southern 500 race at Darlington Raceway.