INDIANAPOLIS — Six-time Indianapolis Motor Speedway race winner Kyle Busch is not a fan of the 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course that will be used by the NASCAR Cup Series for the first time in Sunday’s Verizon 200 at the Brickyard.
“It’s not a fun road course, it’s a parking lot,” Busch said Saturday. “It’s disappointing that we are on a road course and not the oval in my opinion. I think the history here is built around the oval and the road course is built for Formula One to take part in history.
“Now, we are all racing on it and the oval stinks.”
Busch takes pride in the fact that all six of his NASCAR Cup Series wins at IMS have come on the 2.5-mile oval.
He also believes NASCAR on the IMS oval was the truest test of a total team effort that rewarded every aspect of racing including the driver, team, car, crew, engine and aerodynamics.
“You look at the list of drivers that have won here and yeah, there were a few that won here that backed into it, but the rest of the list is the best of the best, the who of the who and the teams of the teams,” Busch explained. “You have to have horsepower, you have to have drag, you have to have downforce – all of that stuff to have a successful run at Indy.
“Those were the guys that won here.
“Now, the cars to beat on the road course are the 9 (Chase Elliott) and the 5 (Kyle Larson).
“To the guys that have won here, they would say it’s more special to win on the oval and the ones that haven’t won here yet would say no.”
From 1994 to 2020, the Brickyard 400 was held on the 2.5-mile oval. The event started with tremendous interest and packed grandstands at the massive Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But beginning in the 2000s, attendance started to diminish more and more each year until hardly anybody showed up for the race from 2015-’19.
Because of COVID-19, last year’s race was held without spectators.
“What is a successful weekend? Empty grandstands or packed grandstands?” Busch asked. “We had a concert here a few years ago and we had more people at the concert than there were at the race. You have to have a whole weekend experience and sometimes the racing is just a part of it.
“I had some friends that went to the Nashville Grand Prix last week and the grandstands were packed, but they said the party was the scene. People were hammered before the race ever started.
“As Coach Gibbs would say, ‘They were running the streets.’”