How fitting would it be if Kyle Busch ends his 26 race winless streak in the first playoff race? That could happen too for Sunday’s Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN). I mean, he won the last playoff race in Homestead last November. He was runner-up in the second May race at Darlington and has two top three finishes in his last three Darlington starts. Furthermore, he has six top seven finishes in his last nine starts on the track dubbed “Too Tough To Tame.”

So, Busch, while having just three playoff points accumulated during the regular season, could get a much needed win and five additional playoff points to his total this weekend.

“I have no expectations,” Busch said of this year’s playoffs. “Just take every event as it comes to us, every opportunity that comes to us, try to do what we can do. We’re going to start every single one of these playoff scenarios behind the eight-ball, basically on the outside looking in. We’re going to have to do everything right.

“In a perfect world, you win races in each of those rounds to push you all the way through to the final round, and you’re good at Phoenix. That’s kind of the name of the game.”

He needs it. He needs momentum on his side. He’s frustrated with how this went during the regular season but hopes he can do what Tony Stewart did in 2011 to where he went winless in the regular season but won half of the playoff races.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver has just one win in his last 48 starts overall. That’s why it would be poetic justice to start the playoffs with a win and know heading into the next two races that he’s automatically advancing to the Round of 12.

“If we can Tony Stewart it, hopefully that will be what we can do,” Busch continued. “Just need to kick it off right this weekend. We raced well at Darlington back in May, just didn’t get the finish in the first race we deserved. Looking forward to getting our M&M’S Throwback scheme up front and see if we can’t get a win this weekend.”

Busch has been banging the he needs more practice drum all season. Well, he had not one, but two races at Darlington back in May. That’s enough data to help. Plus, eight of the 10 playoff tracks this year had a race run at them during this season. That too should give him enough data as well.

“It’s been a lot like a lot of people’s 2020,” Busch said. “The roller coaster of finishes, and we’ve had good races and bad races. Thinking you’re going to have a good run and someone runs into you and you get a flat tire, or a long list of other unfortunate things have happened. We certainly want to get a win here soon. I also look at 2011, I think, when Tony Stewart didn’t do anything in the regular season and came out in the final 10 weeks and won five of those 10 races and won the championship. Also in 2016, Jimmie Johnson wasn’t a huge factor in a lot of the season but made it to the final four and certain circumstances put him in a position to be able to win the championship. So anything is possible. It’s all right there, but we just got to be able to execute when it matters.”