Kyle Busch finishes second again: "It's starting to get frustrating"

Busch won the first stage of the TicketGuardian 500 at Phoenix and led the most laps at 128 of 312 possible, but he missed out on the big prize.

After a heated four-way fight for the lead during the last stage, he got around both eventual race winner Kevin Harvick and teammate Denny Hamlin to take over the top spot with 69 laps remaining

17 laps later, he came down pit road for his final stop and that's where he believes the race was lost.

"Coming into the green-flag stops, we had a couple of guys pit before us. I don't think that hurt us too bad but the jack dropping certainly did. We lost the race on pit road today, but there's been races where I've won it on pit road too. We'll just have to go into next week and see what we can do there," he said.

No chance to catch Harvick

The final stint of the race went completely green with Busch trying his best to track down Harvick. Although he got to within a second, he never could quite catch the 'Freaky Fast' Ford Fusion and doubts there's anything he could have done to change that.

“Before the race, I knew the 4 (Harvick) was the car to beat. I didn’t think we were going to be the second-best car today but we actually had a shot to out-race ’em and beat ’em, but it just didn’t work out.

“Obviously our pitstop wasn’t stellar, and then I got back up pretty good. I got relatively close, and I was counting on the 9 (Chase Elliott) to hold him up a little bit more, and be able to protect his spot a little bit longer than he did. That way, I could try to at least get alongside the 4, and make it a three-way battle for the lead like I did earlier when it was the 11 (Hamlin) holding up the 4. It just never transpired that way.

“(Crew chief) Adam (Stevens) and the guys did some awesome changes overnight, because we weren’t that good yesterday. Proud to come home second, but now it's starting to get frustrating."

Busch leaves Phoenix second in the championship standings, 12 markers back of Harvick, who claimed his third consecutive victory for Stewart-Haas Racing Sunday.