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It looked like it might finally be Kyle Busch’s year to win the Daytona 500.
He was fastest in practice and piloted the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet to the pole for the Great American Race on Sunday (Feb. 15).
That speed carried over to the early stages of the race as Busch led 19 laps. However, right front damage sustained in the Big One on lap 124 coupled with a shuffling of pit strategy relegated the two-time Cup Series champion to a 15th-place finish.
With that result, Busch is now 0-for-21 in the Daytona 500, maintaining his status as arguably the greatest driver to never win NASCAR’s most prestigious race.
However, it is not for a lack of competitiveness.
Rowdy has frequently found himself at the front of the field in the 500; in fact, at 361 laps led, Busch ranks ninth all-time in career laps led at the Daytona 500. He sits second among active Cup drivers, trailing only Denny Hamlin. On the top 10 all-time Daytona 500 laps led list above, Busch sticks out like a sore thumb as the only one without a Harley J. Earl Trophy on his resume.
So, out of his 21 Daytona 500 attempts, when has Busch come the closest to victory lane? Here is a look at the numbers:
Without a doubt, Busch’s best years at the 500 came in the JGR No. 18. In his 14 Daytona 500 starts with that team, Busch earned all three of his career top fives, all five of his top 10s, and all but 46 of his laps led.
Comparatively, Busch has yet to collect a top 10 in his four RCR starts despite moments of being in contention, and he did not even crack the top 20 in his first three Daytona 500 appearances with Hendrick. Busch’s Daytona 500 average finish is also noticeably better at JGR compared to the other two stops in his Cup career.
Out of the 21 starts graphed above, I’ve picked five of Busch’s closest brushes with Daytona 500 greatness to examine a little closer.
2008
After just nine laps led and an average finish of 28.3 in his three starts at Hendrick, Busch immediately turned over a new leaf in his Daytona 500 performance with his change of scenery to JGR.
In his first regular season Cup race in the now-iconic M&Ms colors, Busch led eight times for 86 laps. He was easily out front the most of any driver that day, pacing the field for 54 more laps than the next-closest lap leader in Hamlin with 32.
Busch was in position to go for the win with JGR teammate Tony Stewart, but the two were no match for the Team Penske duo of Ryan Newman and Busch’s older brother Kurt as the latter pushed the former to victory lane. While Busch settled for fourth place, he easily had the best driver rating that day at 133.1.
2009
Out of all of Busch’s Daytona 500 near-misses, this one might have been the toughest to swallow.
That Speedweeks, Busch instantly established himself as a driver to beat by winning his Gatorade Duel 150 race on Thursday. With that victory, he earned the fourth starting spot for the main event on Sunday.
From that starting position, Busch quickly found the front of the field. He led twice for 88 laps, the most he has ever led in a single Daytona 500. That included one stretch when Busch paced the pack for 50 laps in a row. Again, he had one of the best, if not the best, cars in the Cup garage.
And then came the Big One on lap 124. Brian Vickers spun off the front bumper of Dale Earnhardt Jr., moving back up the racetrack and right in front of Busch. With nowhere to go, Busch sustained race-ending damage to his No. 18 Toyota. Despite the 41st-place finish, he had the top driver rating for the second year in a row at 114.2.
2016
Busch’s third-place showing that year was part of a dominant day for JGR at Daytona. All told, the JGR stable, along with affiliate Furniture Row Racing driver Martin Truex Jr., combined to lead 156 of the 200 laps and made up four of the top five finishers, including race winner Hamlin, who nipped Truex at the line.
For his part, Busch led 19 laps and came away with the second-best driver rating of the race at 117.2.
2019
Purely in terms of race finish, this is the closest that Busch has come to holding the Harley J. Earl Trophy. Fighting his way from the 31st starting position, Busch crossed the finish line in a Daytona 500 career-best second, once again behind Hamlin. He led the third-most laps at 37 and came away with the second-best driver rating at 109.2.
Though he again missed out on the win, the Great American Race runner-up finish proved to be a harbinger of things to come for Busch in 2019, who went on to win his second career Cup Series championship that year.
2023
Well, Busch led at the 500-mile mark of this Daytona 500. The only problem is that the 2023 rendition of the race stretched to 530 miles as it went into overtime due to a Daniel Suarez spin with three laps to go.
Busch got caught up in a last-lap crash that sent him tumbling down the running order to 19th while Ricky Stenhouse Jr. took home the trophy.
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So, will Rowdy ever obtain that elusive Daytona 500 checkered flag? As he turns 41 in May, there is no doubt that one of the sport’s greats is running out of chances to check that last box on his career to-do list.
Andrew Stoddard joined Frontstretch in May of 2022 as an iRacing contributor. He is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College, the University of Richmond, and VCU. He works as an athletic communications specialist at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.