Kyle Busch realistic but not giving up

Busch currently ranks at the bottom of the Chase standing following poor races at Loudon and Dover, where a faulty suspension part and an engine failure respectively left him out of contention for victory.

In three weeks, he has gone from leading the standing to losing any realistic chance of winning his first Cup title, but despite that he says his approach to the coming races will remain unchanged.

"I'm going to do the same thing I've done all year long, that's not going to change," Busch said. "Everybody said I gave up. I haven't given up. I'm still going out there to run as hard as I can every single lap and to try to win this thing. Realistically, the chance isn't there."

The 23-year-old still believes he is out of the championship battle, even if the mathematics show he could still get back in it. He says only poor races for those at the top of the standing could now (eventually) give him a chance of fighting back, although he is not counting on that happening.

"You can't count on anybody else having a bad race, so realistically, yeah, we're out of it," Busch said. "If they do have a bad race, then it depends on who has the bad race and how bad the race is for us to get back in it.

"But realistically, if you're not counting on those guys having a bad race, we can't win eight races in a row and have Carl [Edwards] or [Greg] Biffle finish fifth through 10th in every single one of those and still win the deal. It ain't going to happen."

The Gibbs driver says he is still happy with his season as he didn't expect this year to be as good as it has turned out to be. He was anticipating a learning season with his new team following his departure from Hendrick Motorsports at the end of last season.

"We weren't supposed to be in the position we were in to win the championship," Busch added. "This was supposed to be the building year, the learning year and getting used to everything at Joe Gibbs Racing, with Toyota coming on board and getting our relationship going with [crew chief] Steve Addington.

"You can't look at it as a sour year."