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Will Kyle Busch get to victory lane in Bristol for the first time since 2011?

Kyle Busch has five Bristol wins … but hasn’t won in the past five years. (Getty)
Kyle Busch has five Bristol wins … but hasn’t won in the past five years. (Getty)

With five wins at Bristol Motor Speedway, Kyle Busch is arguably the best active Cup Series driver at the half-mile track. But, perhaps strangely, Busch hasn’t won at the track since 2011.

And not only has Busch not won in the last five years, his results have been pretty dreadful. While he has three top-10 finishes in the last 10 races, he’s also finished outside the top 30 four times including finishes of 38th and 39th in 2016.

It’s easy to ask if Busch has lost something at Bristol, but a deeper look doesn’t support an affirmative conclusion to that question. Before he was 39th in August he led 256 of the 357 laps he completed before a part failure led to a crash. In August of 2015 he led 192 laps.

“We found we had an issue with our car last spring where we were blowing right front tires and that was self-inflicted, not driver, but us as a team with what we did in practice and stuff kind of alluded to it,” Busch said on Friday. “Then last fall we had a great car and that thing was fast and we ended up breaking a part underneath the back holding the rear-end in the car. That was a part failure …

“It’s just been frustrating the last few times of coming here and not really having the speed in order to run up in the lead and lead a lot of laps like I used to. When I used to win here each and every time, I would lead 250, 350, 400 laps or something like that. We were pretty dominant force and that’s kind of gone away and it would be nice to get those days back in the 18 camp.”

Perhaps Sunday is the day Busch’s prowess returns. Busch posted the fastest lap in each of Saturday’s practice sessions. A win in Sunday’s eighth race of the year would not only be his first in 11 starts at Bristol but the first win of 2017 for Joe Gibbs Racing. The team, which won 12 of 36 races a year ago and four of the first eight, is winless so far.

And while Busch said that he felt JGR was “competitive” and “close” to a win, he also pointed out how their immediate success last season wasn’t sustainable for the entire season and didn’t pay off in the form of a championship

“It certainly didn’t bode well for us to be as strong as we were at the beginning part of the season and the middle part of the season to win a championship because of how strong we were early on,” Busch said. “You look at [Martin Truex Jr.] and the Hendrick guys and they picked up and won the championship [with Jimmie Johnson]. I don’t think there’s any reason for cause for concern yet, but ask me that question again in about 10 weeks.”

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!