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WATCH: Kurt Busch Narrates the Experience of Driving at Las Vegas With the Help of a Simulator

Published 09/27/2020, 11:50 AM EDT

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USA Today via Reuters

On Sunday night, the NASCAR Cup Series race will kick off at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. For the likes of Kyle Busch and Kurt Busch, this is practically a home race, as they are both from Vegas.

Recently, the older Busch, Kurt, hopped onto the iRacing simulator to showcase a lap of the track. He admitted, “Vegas being my home town, it’s intimidated me, I guess, extra over the other tracks over the years.”

Kurt Busch noted that there is a big difference between the races in spring and in fall. According to him, the fall race is far hotter than in spring. As a result, the track atmosphere and grip levels change a lot between the two races.

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What else did Kurt Busch say?

Coming to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway itself, he observed that the start of the track is modeled after Kansas and Chicago. Busch revealed that Turn 1 gets quite bumpy, as does Turn 2.

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Meanwhile, Turns 3 and 4 usually have the sun beating down and that makes it a bit slicker. Busch revealed that Turn 3 and Turn 4 are quite difficult and the cars need to be set up in a particular way.

He also admitted that overtaking has become a lot more difficult. This is largely because drivers need to rely on each other for a draft, otherwise, they will be quite vulnerable.

Moving on to the tire strategy, Kurt Busch observed that everybody was opting for a conservative approach. So in the initial laps, Busch was struggling to generate some heat. However, as the lap counter increases, the tires build up more and more heat and the grip goes up exponentially.

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Finally, he warned that after a pit stop, the tires are quite slick and it gets worse in traffic. However, he said that even though it is his home race, he still likes to treat it like any other race.

Admittedly, his younger brother, Kyle Busch, will be thinking the same thing. Both Busch brothers will be starting in the Top-10, with defending champion Kyle in 2nd and older brother Kurt in 9th position at Vegas.

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Written by:

Dhruv George

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Dhruv George is a senior Formula One and NASCAR analyst for EssentiallySports, having authored nearly 12000 articles spanning different sports like F1, NASCAR, Tennis, NFL, and eSports. He graduated with a PG Diploma in Journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications. Dhruv has also conducted interviews with F1 driver Pierre Gasly and Moto2 rider Tony Arbolino.
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