Kyle Busch special, but discounted

LV native tops Cup field, takes dismissals in stride

LONG POND, Pa. — Kyle Busch spent the week in New York City with his family, hitting the town and taking in the sights like any other tourist. Wife Samantha wore a Yankees cap as they caught a baseball game and the couple attended a theater production of “Sleep No More.”

The outings seemed fitting: Busch is enjoying his time leading the points standings while he gives the rest of the field a few restless nights.

Busch and Kevin Harvick have turned NASCAR into a two-driver show — they’ve won nine of 13 races — and the rest of the drivers are simply playing catch-up to the former champions.

The 33-year-old Busch, the 2015 Cup champ and a native Las Vegan, is on course for a career year.

His four wins are four shy of matching his career best in 2008, he has

three poles and eight top-five finishes, and he has racked up so many playoff points (25) that he could seemingly waltz into Homestead in the season finale and race for the title.

The Joe Gibbs Racing star is coming off a sensational effort in the No. 18 Toyota at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He won the pole for the Coca-Cola 600, won all four stages, led 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.

Busch won the second Pocono race last season and then romped at Charlotte to knock the last two winless tracks off his resume.

“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 and has at least one victory every season of his career, including at least four each from 2015 to the present.

He won Saturday’s Xfinity race at Pocono and has 189 wins across NASCAR’s three national series (Cup, second-tier Xfinity and Trucks), which puts him 11 shy of matching Richard Petty for the overall record.

Petty, of course, won all 200 races in the Cup series and the countdown to The King has irked traditionalists who believe the two drivers should barely be mentioned in the same sentence. Busch’s 47 Cup wins, while impressive in any era and 15th on the career list, can’t catch Petty and 200 will remain NASCAR’s holy grail.

What’s not in dispute is Busch’s milestone of winning at every active Cup track. NASCAR returns in September to Charlotte, where the series for the first time will race on the track’s road course. Some of Busch’s critics believe the track record won’t count until he wins on the new layout.

Kyle Busch