Joe Gibbs Racing

Kyle Busch used an impressive combination of patience and a late-race, two-tire strategy to finish a solid fourth in Sunday's TUMS Fast Relief 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.

The driver of the No. 18 M&M's Halloween Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) was able to overcome a poor qualifying result (41st) en route to his fourth top-five finish in 10 career Sprint Cup starts at the .526-mile oval.

"It was definitely a great battle with everybody," said Busch, who matched his best career Sprint Cup result at Martinsville with his third fourth-place finish at NASCAR's smallest track. "It was a hard-fought day and the M&M's Camry was decent. I'm real proud of the effort. The guys had awesome pit stops all day. The guys worked hard. Every stop we made a change on the car trying to make it better. Tires were the name of the game. We just seemed to be on the right strategy when we could come get tires and drive back through some guys. We had a good enough car to do that with. We want to win every week, but I've been trying to get there and trying to get a little bit better. It seems like the past couple weeks, we've done some improving. I'm encouraged, but we've got a lot more to go."

Are you still trying to figure out Martinsville and are you comfortable racing there now?

"If I had Jeff Gordon's or Jimmie Johnson's success there, then I would be comfortable going there. But I haven't had any success there, yet. I've got maybe two top-fives and don't feel comfortable there. I'm not very good, yet. I've had some decent runs there, where I've felt like we've had a car to win and had a shot to win. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get the track position toward the end of the race. Jeff (Gordon) is so good there and Jimmie (Johnson) is so good there. They are probably the two most difficult guys to pass there because they know the place. They know how to get off the corner and how to roll the middle of the corner there. Everything is timing, and their stuff just works, whatever it is. We've got some work to do on trying to figure it out. I feel more comfortable going there than I did last year. For some reason, Denny (Hamlin) runs well there, and I'm not sure why I can't get my stuff to run well there because we have the same stuff. When we went to ‘Little Rock' (in Rockingham, N.C.) and tested before the first race, we gained somewhat because we ran identical lap times as the 48 (Johnson). We were actually a tick better on an 80-lap run than they were on a 60-lap run. We still lost tires there in the spring, so I'm hoping we've figured that out for this time around."