BUSCH’S BEST
Kyle turning 2018 into a career year
LONG POND, Pa. — Kyle Busch spent much of the past week in New York City with his family, hitting the town and taking in the sights like any other tourist. His wife wore a Yankees cap as they caught a baseball game. The couple attended a theater production of “Sleep No More.”
The outings seemed fitting. Like the Bronx Bombers, Busch is enjoying his time on top of the standings — and he is certainly giving the rest of the field a few restless nights.
Busch and Kevin Harvick have essentially turned NASCAR into a two-driver show this season by combining to win nine of 13 races, and the rest of the drivers are simply playing catch-up to the former Cup Series champions.
The 33-year-old Busch, who won the title in 2015, is on course for a career year. His four wins are four shy of matching his career best in 2008, he has three pole positions and eight top-five finishes, and he has racked up so many playoff points (25) that he could seemingly waltz into the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway and race for the title.
The Joe Gibbs Racing star is coming off a sensational performance in the No. 18 Toyota last Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He won the pole for the Coca-Cola 600, won all four stages while leading 377 of 400 laps and became the only driver in NASCAR’s modern era to win a points race on every track on the schedule. Now the series is back at Pocono Raceway, where Busch won last July to move within a CMS victory of the feat.
“It’s just something that has never been done, and it’s hard to find things that have never been done in this sport,” Busch said. “It’s been around for a long, long time. So it’s very meaningful and special and something that I’ve kind of strived for.”
Busch has been special in the sport since he won two races driving for Rick Hendrick in 2005. He has at least one victory every season of his career, including at least four starting with the 2015 schedule.
He won Saturday’s Xfinity Series race at Pocono and has 189 wins across NASCAR’s three national series (47 in Cup, 92 in Xfinity and 50 in Camping World Truck), which puts him 11 shy of matching Richard Petty for the overall record.
Petty won all 200 races in the Cup Series, though, so the countdown to catching The King has irked traditionalists who believe the two drivers should barely be mentioned in the same sentence. Busch’s Cup Series wins total, while impressive in any era and 15th on the career list, can’t match Petty; 200 will remain NASCAR’s Holy Grail.
What’s not in dispute is Busch’s milestone of winning at every active Cup Series track. NASCAR returns in September to CMS, where the series for the first time will race on the venue’s road course. Some of Busch’s critics — and because of a career pockmarked with boorish behavior, he has plenty — believe the track record shouldn’t count until he wins on the new layout.
“Everybody wants to make my life more difficult, so I’m sure that I won’t be credited for all the race tracks once the Roval gets here,” he said.
But the track name is the track name, and the mark stands no matter what happens there this fall.
“I think everybody just around the sport really appreciates how hard that is,” Gibbs said. “… Kyle is young, and for him to be able to get that done at this age, I think, is special. I think everybody around the sport really appreciates it.”
There is at least one milestone missing. While Busch has won at Daytona International Speedway, he is 0-for-13 in the annual opener every NASCAR driver wants to win at least once.
“It’s about the Daytona 500 and trying to get that one,” he said. “It took another guy that’s very, very popular 20 years to get it done, so I’d like to think it won’t take me that long, although I’m creeping up on that number. We’ll see how soon we can get that one accomplished.”
Dale Earnhardt had achieved about all there was to do in NASCAR by the mid-1990s, including tying Petty’s record of seven Cup Series championships. Winning the Daytona 500 was the only milestone that eluded Earnhardt over the first two decades of his career, but he broke through and won in 1998.
Now Busch has “The Great American Race” in his sight.
He missed the 2015 edition after he crashed into a concrete wall the day before and broke his right leg and left foot. Busch withstood multiple surgeries, went through a grueling rehabilitation program and missed only 11 races. He returned in late May, and NASCAR granted him a waiver to race for the title despite him not starting every points race. Then he won the season finale and the championship.
He will start fifth in today’s Cup Series race, but he topped the speed chart in practice Friday and Saturday, then showed his talent with his latest Xfinity win.
Xfinity Series regulars completed the top six: Daniel Hemric was third, followed by Austin Cindric, pole winner Cole Custer and Elliott Sadler, who has a 62-point lead over Custer for first place in the points standings.
Busch overcame a penalty for speeding on pit road in the 27th lap by leading 24 of the first 26 laps and the final 40. He said after the race that he didn’t think he was speeding, but it didn’t matter.
He was definitely going fast when it counted.
“We knew we had speed in our race car,” Busch said. “It was really fast out front.”
It’s a view he is accustomed to, and one he has always been willing to fight for.
“It’s me against the world. It’s me against everybody else,” Busch said. “Sometimes you’re against your critics, as well, that you have to deal with, and I think all of us have those. It seems as though those voices have gotten louder over the last few years.”