Kyle Busch A Winning Combination

KyleBusch will be making his fourth NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start of 2016 as he returns to theNo. 18 SiriusXM Tundra for Friday night’s American Ethanol E15 225 at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill.  Busch has been nearly perfect in his five Truck Series starts at the mile-and-a-half venue in the Prairie State, visiting victory lane four times.
 
Busch led 79 laps en route to victory in his first Truck Series start at Chicagoland Speedway driving for Billy Ballew Motorsports in the 2009 event. He made it back-to-back wins in 2010, this time dominating the event leading 121 laps in Kyle Busch Motorsports’ (KBM) debut season. 2011 was the only year that the Las Vegas native entered the Chicago Truck Series race that he didn’t win. He led 10 laps and finished fifth that season. KBM’s owner-driver returned to victory lane in the 2013 Truck Series race in the Windy City after leading a race-high 52 laps.
 
2014 proved to be a unique victory, as Busch missed both of Thursday’s Truck Series practice sessions to attend to his Chase for the Sprint Cup Media Day obligations. Erik Jones, who was splitting the 22-race schedule behind the wheel of the No. 51 with Busch that season, dialed the Dollar General Tundra in during practice finishing third and eighth, respectively during the two sessions.  When Friday’s qualifying session was rained out and subsequently the race was postponed to Saturday, ‘Rowdy’ was forced to start from the back of the field.
 
Busch worked his way from the back of the field and took the lead for the first time on lap 52. He had opened up over a four-second lead when he pitted on lap 110, but a lengthy stop and untimely caution shortly after he returned to the track left him one lap down with just under 40 laps remaining. After taking the wave around, the Dollar General Tundra restarted from the eighth position on lap 118. Busch regained the lead with 16 laps remaining and went on to pick up his 41st career victory in NASCAR’s third division. The post-race box score showed that the No. 51 Tundra passed an amazing 59 lead-lap trucks during the event.
 
With Busch once again tending to Chase for the Sprint Cup Media Day obligations during Thursday’s practice sessions, he will once again call upon Jones to get his SiriusXM Tundra dialed in. Jones, who captured KBM’s first-ever driver’s championship last season, finished sixth in last year’s Truck Series race at Chicago and won the 2015 June NASCAR XFINITY Series race at the 1.5-mile oval.
 
Not only did Jones and Busch team up for the victory at Chicagoland in 2014, the duo helped KBM nab its third of four Truck Series Owners’ championships that season combining for 10 wins across 22 races. The No. 18 team is hoping that Jones and Busch will once again be a winning combination this weekend and the part-time team can earn its second victory of 2016 and the organization’s eighth overall this season.

KBM PR