Kyle Busch snuck up there with a runner up in Wednesday nights All-Star race. But, it’s just another reflection of how his 2020 season has gone. Busch, has had good finishes. He’s finished second in three points paying races. He’s also came home in the top five seven times. 

But, most, if not all, of those finishes have been flukes. Busch admitted as much after those races. 

His No. 18 Toyota is lacking in speed still. He’s just so skilled that he’s making up for the lack of it and also staying out of trouble. 

He’s not a top five car for much of these races. He just sneaks in there in the end. 

Wednesday night at the Bristol (Tenn) Motor Speedway was another prime example of that. 

“It’s tough, said Busch. “We’re struggling right now. There’s just no speed in our racecars for some reason. I don’t know what’s going on. 

“It seemed like tonight, even when we were mired in 10th, I was driving 110% just to maintain where the hell I was, not going forward. That’s usually not indicative of us, Joe Gibbs Racing, Toyota, whatever. 

“It’s certainly been frustrating this year. It seems like any time I fall into a rhythm, I back up myself just a little bit to 90, 95%, I’m going backwards. I’m getting passed, slowing down. You can’t run at 100% all the time every lap. When you do, you start making mistakes. 

“We’ve just been run into a lot this year, too. When we’ve had nothing happen, we get run into. Those are bad finishes, as well. I don’t know. We can chalk it up to a whole bunch of things.

“For lack of a better term is we’ve got to be faster.”

Busch though, said this season reminds him of another one. In 2014, he won the fifth race of the season. He go winless in the final 31 races too. 

“Yeah, 2014 was really close to this,” Busch said of it any season reminded him of this one. “We struggled super bad when we came out with this new body style, the Gen-6 body style. We were pretty bad as a company at JGR that year. We won one restrictor plate race that year, that was at California. Rest of us didn’t win at all. That was a frustrating season. 

“Unfortunately I don’t have a win yet. But it feels just like that year. I don’t know where it’s going at, whatever. We do have six second-place finishes. I think, four, five, six, whatever the hell it is. We’ve been close a couple of times. Many of the other races we’re getting run into. 

“We’ve had flat tires, gone two laps down, tried to do the right thing and drive it back to pit road, not drive a caution. It penalizes us in the day. Now I understand why those guys do that.

“Other than that, you get run into by a guy that shouldn’t be pitting on the same pit lap as you, I think, at Talladega. I mean, I can keep going. No point in that.

“We got to fight harder, do better. That’s all there is to it.”

Busch, has just one victory in his last 39 starts. Can he overcome that like he did from 2014 to 2015?

“When I came back Charlotte time a few weeks later, it started to kind of click, everybody started to go in the right direction,” Busch said of his 2015 championship winning season. “We won four, five times. Then it seems like Matt won a couple, Denny won a couple, Carl won a couple. Started to go there. 

“It took us a good year and a half to get back up to the top of the circle. I don’t know if that’s what we’re on now. I certainly hope not. It’s definitely frustrating. Trust me, it’s not very fun where we’re at. I know everybody is kicking themselves and trying to do all they can to work harder and be smarter.”