On paper, Kyle Busch should be the favorite to win Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 (6 p.m. ET/FOX/PRN) at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Busch, enters this weekend’s annual Memorial Day race with three top three finishes over his last four starts on the season. To go along with that, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver has four top six finishes in his last five starts on the 1.5-mile oval including three top three results in his last four tries there.

He led 377 laps in his ‘600 win in 2018. He led 79 more in a third place effort last year. Seems like a legitimate contender right?

Well, Busch’s No. 18 Toyota has lacked some pace in 2020 though. He’s only led 14 laps all year, all coming in February’s season opening Daytona 500.

On Wednesday night at the Darlington Raceway, Busch, never was a factor through the first half of the rain delayed Toyota 500. He finished 26th in Stage 1 and 13th in Stage 2. That’s how his No. 18 Toyota was on Sunday afternoon on the same 1.366-mile South Carolina race track too. Busch, was 15th and 16th respectively in the two stages.

But, as the final stage went on, his car came to life.

“When we unloaded here tonight, it was so loose I could barely hang onto it,” Busch said of the race. “Today it seemed like the track was a bit looser.  I know we came with a little bit different setup because we were kind of off here on Sunday.  But we started the race really far off on the other side of the fence today.  We were tight on Sunday, really loose today.  We had to tighten up and get it back to somewhat of a middle ground I guess from the two races.  Obviously I can’t quite drive it as loose as my teammates can.  That was kind of surprising for what we were able to do on the simulator to how it translated here on the real racetrack.

“Track position was so important.  You could hold a guy up for a fair amount, not allow him to pass you very easily.  That was I guess a little disappointing in that we were not able to make as good of moves as we wanted with myself and the 18 car with the way my car was driving.”

Once Busch got that track position that he needed, his car came alive. He charged up to the top five then was there in the top three battling for the win in the end. Unfortunately, he misjudged a cap between Chase Elliott and Kevin Harvick and got into the left rear of Elliott’s No. 9 Chevrolet sending him into the wall on Lap 200. That brought out the 11th and final caution and during the yellow flag, rain began to fall which ended the race 20 laps early.

Busch, had a car to win at that point as he methodically worked his way there.

“The 11 (Hamlin) had pretty good speed, but he’s always good here,” Busch continued. “Arguably we were pretty equal on that second-to-last run although he passed me and was able to drive away a good bit.  He definitely had the long run speed over what I did.  He’s better at being able to take care of his tires, I think.

“The 20 (Erik Jones) led for a bit. “I think he overused his stuff and fell back a little bit.  You can kind of see those guys up front that ran hard, real fast on the front side of the runs, they’d burn their stuff up and start coming back to the other guys.

“Overall I felt like (crew chief) Adam (Stevens) and the guys did a great job on the car getting it closer, bringing it up to speed, getting to the front.  Seemed like our car picked up speed as well, too, with cleaner air.”

That’s a good sign because but for whatever reason, his car isn’t unloading as strong as it should. Without any practices over the foreseeable future, they have a lot of work to do still. I’m ho-hum on his race winning chances on Sunday, but we will see what happens when we leave Charlotte on Wednesday night.