Kyle Busch, who suffered a power steering failure in Stage 3, continued to run in the top 10 cars all day after leaving the grid seventh. Still, his 35th-place DNF in Iowa was only his second in the last three weeks.
If that wasn’t enough, the only driver who finished one race behind Busch doesn’t even race the Cup Series full-time anymore, and his name is AJ Allmendinger. But another driver who nearly had his Iowa run halted by a DNF was Denny Hamlin.
Joe Gibbs’ former teammates are dealing with a much different situation now that Busch is driving Richard Childress’ No. 8 Chevrolet as their prized senior statesman.
The simplest example: Denny secured a playoff berth with three wins this season after a frustrating day finishing 24th at Newton, his debut NASCAR Cup Series venue. Meanwhile, Rowdy is winless since Iowa and 31 points shy of the cut line. Still, some critics believe that Denny Hamlin’s winning streak, which saw him beat Kyle Busch, has finally come to an end.
Some add that his early-season winning streak will soon run out due to his average performance in recent weeks. But Hamlin has never given up on his luck, and the No. 11 pick seems to have learned a lesson as he watched Busch stumble with other teams.
Denny Hamlin’s reality check: Is momentum only a myth in NASCAR?
Kyle Busch maintained a top-10 car until his disappointing pit trip on Lap 272, while Denny Hamlin did the opposite as his Toyota continued to fall laps down early in the Iowa Corning 350. After struggling with tires for the first 30 laps, Hendrick Motorsports pole winner Kyle Larson was lapped on Lap 34 of the 350-lap race.
Then Kyle Busch had trouble, sliding off the track after battling for 10th place on Lap 270 and reporting tire issues. When he came into the pits, the No. 3 team discovered the steering belt on his Chevrolet had broken.
Busch ended his day just two laps later with his second DNF of 2024. In stark contrast, once the dust had finally settled in Hawkeye State, #11 was placed in P24 after going through a concerning wreck in Stage 2. His podcast partner, Jared Allen, considered these facts in the latest release of Actions Detrimental to shed light on the
circumstances surrounding Kyle Busch. Allen compared Busch’s situation with Hamlin’s, asking the latter if “momentum (is) a thing or it just looks like that from the outside sometimes?”
Denny elaborated on his expert opinion, as he began, “I mean momentum is a thing, yes. But it’s you know the sport is still so week to week because you’re going to a different type of track the next week, right? And there’s no guarantee that you’re going to have your car handling just right, and so you can have momentum and you can be on five straight top fives and then go to Talladega and say, ‘Well we’re going to get crashed here.’ So it is a thing, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried not to, you know, harp on the bad days quite as much.”
Consequently, Denny’s run of one race win and 4 top-5s came to a screeching halt on the Sonoma road race last week, where he recorded his second DNF of the 2024 season. Paradoxically, Kyle Busch finished 12th in that race.
And yet, when speaking about Busch’s recent poor performance, Denny had nothing but encouraging words for his former teammate. “And I don’t know where he’s been driving… I saw on social media that he was considered a top-five car. I was driving there and I missed him all day.
So I can’t really comment on that, but Kyle Busch is definitely better than what they’re showing and the team itself is better than what they’re showing…”
8 races remain to fix the #8 team’s fortunes
Kyle Busch, who finished 12th at Sonoma, surely wanted to end his sorry saga by potentially ending his longest winless streak in his Cup Series debut at Iowa Speedway.
But many agree that his RCR #8 Chevrolet has just been incredibly unlucky this year and has not otherwise lived up to his excellent standards. Even Busch’s car spotter, Derek Neeland, posted an update on Twitter that aptly describes their current situation. “If it rains $100 bills, we might get a penny. We’ve been incredibly lucky this year,” Neeland wrote.
Kyle Busch seemed frustrated and disheartened, expressing his disappointment to the Iowa media. Busch tried his best to be patient, explaining the cause and effect of the No. 8 team’s problems on Sunday, telling his audience via NBC Sports: “We don’t know what happened, but a piece of the next generation broke… There’s something in the left rear suspension.
I don’t know if it’s a tie rod or what, but it changed the angle of the rear of the car. So we came out there and fixed it, rolled it back and ripped the power steering belt off. The belt snapped…” “It’s definitely frustrating,” Busch said, echoing the public’s reaction, and expressed hope for a better performance in the next eight races of the regular season.
Ultimately, drivers remaining on the playoff bubble have just six spots left to qualify for the championship. The postseason begins after the regular-season championship final at Darlington at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sept. 1. That doesn’t even give Busch a full two months to make up for his subpar progress.
It’s a challenge, to be sure, but it would also be foolish to dismiss NASCAR’s winningest driver to the point of throwing in the towel on his own terms.
