Restarts critical at Pocono, which is good news for Kyle Busch

Sure, competitors must have enough horsepower to differentiate themselves from the competition. But even at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in equal equipment, Busch’s average speed on the restart was 178.338mph compared to his teammate Carl Edwards, who was second with a distant 174.299mph. 

With that kind of an advantage, it’s not surprising Busch collected his fourth Cup win last week, tying him with Brad Keselowski for most wins in the series.

Busch rolls off 16th on Sunday at Pocono Raceway — one of two tracks where he has yet to win in Cup, the other being Charlotte. But Busch believes restarts will be equally important in Sunday’s Pennsylvania 400. 

“Restarts are huge here for sure,” Busch said. “Just having the restarts with the long straightaway here getting down into Turn 1 you can fan out pretty wide and having the opportunity to stay single file obviously allows you to go down the straightaway faster but when everybody fans out it definitely manipulates the runs of the different grooves and the different lines. 

“It’s a bigger challenge here than maybe some other race tracks but you file down into about two lanes if you’re lucky through Turn 1, but more times than not you’d like to be single file through there. It’s tricky here for sure with the restarts and they play a big role to what this race ends up being.”

Keselowski agrees that Busch’s time spent in the lower series helped hone his skills on restarts. With the time Busch spent in trucks — particularly with the number of short tracks the series used to run — it was beneficial to perfecting his craft.

“I would say that restarts have developed into a key part our racing since we’ve gone to double-file restarts,” said Keselowski, who starts seventh in the Pennsylvania 400. “What happens is you always have one line that’s preferred and one line that’s not. Of course, you have the whole restart zone situation and what that has created is this offense/defense mode that everyone goes into depending on whether they’re in the preferred or non-preferred lane.  

“It’s just different tactics than I think what we’ve traditionally seen in this sport, and those tactics have evolved over time to where the drivers that have a lot of experience are pretty darn good at it, so the more experience you can get at it in those other series is very beneficial, especially as the leader.  I would say that Kyle is getting out of it what he puts in.  He puts in a lot of work and he’s getting a lot of results out of it and he deserves a lot of credit for that.”

Keselowski admitted he has work to do when it comes to restarts — if he wants to stay in Busch’s same zip code. Last Sunday at Indy he ranked sixth with an average speed of 172.653mph, behind Busch, Edwards, Harvick (173.639mph), Truex (173.320mph) and Hamlin (173.047mph).

The top-five drivers in restarts at Pocono in June were Chase Elliott (168.852mph), Kurt Busch (168.230mph), Matt Kenseth (168.185mph), Jimmie Johnson (167.890mph) and Edwards (166.810mph). Kurt Busch went on to win the race. Keselowski was 20th with an average speed of 163.017mph — but still finished third. 

“Some days you feel really good and some days not so much,” Keselowski said regarding restarts. “I think right now, it’s my opinion, that probably Joey Logano is the best restarter in the sport right now and Kyle is probably a pretty close second. 

"I think I’m probably in that top-10 bracket, but not as high as I want to be. I want to be the best at it.”