Kyle Busch looking for a breakthrough
Ever since he burst onto the scene as a 19-year-old NASCAR Cup Series pole-sitter in 2005, Kyle Busch has been the most talented driver on the track much of that time.
Lately, though, there are days Busch isn’t the top wheelman in the house.
Brexton Busch, his 6-year-old son, is winning at a clip dad envies a bit and also uses for inspiration and insight into his own craft.
At last Sunday’s runner-up showing at the Busch Light Clash exhibition race at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Kyle Busch hoped to piggyback his son’s dirt track victory the previous night in South Carolina.
“I was trying to match him,” Busch said. “He’s winning more than me these days, so somebody better send him a contract.”
Paternal pride carried a hint of frustration amid a fallow stretch relative to Busch’s track record.
Busch captured just three of 59 Cup Series wins — ninth-most all time — the past two seasons after a five-season span featuring 27 victories and two season championships. At one point, he endured a 44-start drought, beginning with a 2020 win in hometown Las Vegas and ending on his 36th birthday last May in Kansas.
Yet even during the best of times Busch has rarely been a factor during his sport’s biggest event, a trend he hopes to change during next Sunday’s Daytona 500.
“It’s at the top of the to do-list,” Busch said. “That box has [not] yet been checked.”
Busch has penned pretty much every other line of his Hall of Fame resumé multiple times.
A record 222 total NASCAR wins also include a record 102 victories in the Xfinity Series — including five in five starts in 2021 — and 61 in the Truck Series, two of those coming last season in five tries.
The ability to drive anything, anywhere and often come out ahead has not translated to the 2 ½-mile oval at Daytona International Speedway. Busch’s 17 starts in the 500 ended with an average finish of 19.7, as well as four crashes and two failed engines.
Busch also has had his chances, albeit few and far between.
In 2019, he finished runner-up to Denny Hamlin, now a threetime 500 winner. Busch and then teammate Tony Stewart were seemingly in command in 2008. But the Dodges of Ryan Newman and Busch’s brother, Kurt left the two Toyotas in the dust as Busch slipped to fourth and Stewart third.
“Just haven’t been able to get it done,” Busch said. “It’ll happen when it happens. You can’t force it.”
Busch realizes the Daytona 500 has not been kind to some of the sport’s legends.
Stewart, a three-time champion and 48-race winner, is among Hall of Famers haunted by the failure to win the Great American Race.
“There’s a lot of guys that have been greats in our sport that did not win that race,” Busch said. “I would not like to go down as one of those guys. We’ll work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Stewart was one of the few to possess Busch’s raw talent. Blessed with an engineer’s brain, Busch brings another rare quality to car.
“Kyle is underrated in how much skill he has of making a car that might be when he starts the weekend — it might be a mid-pack car,” fellow driver Ty Dillon told the Orlando Sentinel. “[But] his knowledge of setups and how to adjust his car to how he wants it to feel, and then his confidence within that [makes the difference].
“His pretty obvious glaring talent [is able] to get the most of out his car during the race and being aggressive in restarts.”
Busch continues to expand his data base too as he guides his son’s racing journey.
Born in 2015, the year of his father’s first Cup Series crown, Brexton Busch faced a steep learning curve when he began racing as a 5-year-old.
“We’d go three laps down and an eight-lap heat race — it wasn’t great,” Busch said. “I was wondering what we’re doing.”
Kyle Busch’s son is a chip off the ol’ engine block, racing at times against boys twice his age. Access to his dad’s considerable resources and on-track experiences helps.
Busch said the relationship has proved to be a two-way street that he hopes ends with a father-son celebration in Victory Lane at the Daytona 500.
Email Edgar Thompson at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com or follow him on Twitter at @ osgators.