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Auto Racing
Friday, May 16, 2008
Kyle Busch psyched for NASCAR’s All-Star race, sprints to the pole..but are rivals ready to pounce?
Burning down the house: It’ll be hot, hot, hot in NASCAR’s All-Star race
(Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images)
By Mike Mulhern
To translate this web page into Spanish click Here
CONCORD
So is this the night brash Kyle Busch gets his comeuppance, for all the aggravation he’s been dealing out on the stock car tour?
This All-Star race – XXIV, since it was first created by the late T. Wayne Robertson of R.J. Reynolds in 1985 – has no points on the line, pays a cool $1 million-plus to win, and is typically a good place to settle a few grievances…sort of like that dark backstretch at old Columbia Speedway where back in the ‘50s and ‘60s sometimes a guy would come off two and – Golly, gee whiz – just never make it to turn three, simply disappear into the darkness.
But anyone wanting to settle things with Busch will first have to catch him. He’s been one of the fastest on the NASCAR scene all spring, be it Sprint Cup, Nationwide or Truck, so Saturday’s 9 p.m. feature should be no different.
And Friday night he blew away the field, including Jeff Gordon, to win the pole for the All-Star green. Not only was Busch fast on the track, but he was also fast on pit road too—qualifying for this event is unusual, with a four-tire pit stop included in the three-lap run. The pit road speed limit of 45 mph was in effect for drivers entering pit road but there was no speed limit leaving.
And then like Dale Earnhardt Sr. – the target of more than a few angry ‘I’ll get him back’ threats – liked to say, with appropriate menace: ‘If they’re coming after me, they’d better do a darned good job of it…..’
Of course these guys are more professional, usually, than to deal out personal justice like that, preferring to use more tact and finesse.
Then again Busch is no stranger to controversial, to put it mildly. Just ask his own brother Kurt – they crashed last year in this very race while fighting for the win, with the younger Kyle making a move perhaps a bit too aggressive.
Kyle Busch has already won eight NASCAR touring events this season, and even Carl Edwards is getting frustrated.
Kyle Busch is getting quite a collection of NASCAR checkered flags
(Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)
But, hey, maybe there is hope for Busch’s rivals: a switch to Formula One?
Or at least an F1 test: “We’re actually working on that right now,” Busch says. “A test session at the end of November or beginning of December, going to Japan for a little exhibition…and see what it’s like.”
Huh?
“We’ll take the Cup car over there too, run around either Twin Ring Motegi or something like that and show them what the Cup cars are like….and try to get in the Formula One car,” Busch says.
“We’ll see how good I test first. We’ll see if my neck can withstand the G-forces.”
A jump to Formula One itself? “I wouldn’t mind it,” Busch says. “If I can do it, and I’m good at it, then I’ll give it a shot.
“But it seems their racing isn’t all that great; they get stuck in line and the aero takes over everything.
“And I don’t think it is just ‘put a driver in the seat’ to make it go. You need a little bit more of a car.”
The best burnout man in the business? Kyle Busch.
But Kevin Harvick, Greg Biffle, Jimmie Johnson and Clint Bowyer
will give him a challenge in Saturday night’s
Burnout Challenge
(Photo by Geoff Burke/Getty Images for NASCAR)
How about something perhaps a little easier, like the Indy 500?
“It would be good, I’d like it, and wouldn’t mind doing it,” Busch says. “I’d have to get a test in it and see if I’m any good at driving those cars. I have no idea.
“I tend to jerk on the wheel too much, so I’d probably end up trying to kill myself, to be honest.
“I wouldn’t say it would be coming in the next five years, but probably after that.”
So just who is the Kyle Busch anyway? The more we get to know him, the more there is to know about him.
His talent is exception. A Tim Richmond, a Dale Earnhardt, a Jeff Gordon perhaps…
“It’s something I don’t tend to focus on too much,” Busch insists. “I prefer to be my own person, set my own style.”
And the boos, Busch says, just roll off his back: “I just laugh, like ‘Okay. Just because I’m not the most popular guy here, don’t hate on my talent.’
“I guess they do. I don’t care. I’m here to do what I have to do…and as long as I’m winning races….
“Driver intros, that’s not going to make or break my weekend.
“I’ve pretty much been doomed since I got here. I’m pretty much going to be doomed for the next 10 years. That’s why I just try to go out there and win….”
“If Kyle ever gets it all balanced out, he’ll be unstoppable,” Gordon says of Busch’s aggressive and speed. “He’s darned near unstoppable right now.”
And what is Kyle Busch looking for here Saturday night?
“It’s a different atmosphere, a different way of racing for everybody,” he says. “It’s a non-points race, and you’re going after a million bucks.”
But payback? “I think the drivers should be smarter than that,” Busch says. “I don’t recall too many of them I’ve wrecked, at least on purpose.
“Things happen, and if it happens, then so be it…and we lose a million dollars.”
One of the cool things about this event is that nobody ever seems to know the rules, because there are typically several odd ones thrown in. And then the late Earnhardt used to make up some rules himself as the race went along.
Busch says that’s again the case: “To be honest with you, I heard that the inversion is now out, so I don’t even know what the rules are. I haven’t read or seen anything.
“From what I heard, it’s just 25 laps each segment (four of them), and that’s pretty much it.”
A big wild card – NASCAR’s new winged car, used here for the first time. It’s been a difficult car for drivers and crews to deal with.
Or maybe that will just be a good excuse for a driver to haul out if there’s a big crash.
We want your reaction, so please comment on this story and offer your own opinions, on this story, on our NASCAR videos, and anything about NASCAR:
NASCAR hosting a Miami ‘All-Star party’ for Juan Pablo Montoya’s fans
(Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)
THE NASCAR NOTEBOOK
NASCAR executives are doing more with this year’s All-star event than just letting it play out on the track here in North Carolina.
NASCAR is also orchestrating a NASCAR Sprint All-Star ‘viewing party’ in Miami, which should bring out a strong Latino contingent. And there is a radio advertising campaign on Miami’s Caracol 1260, designed specifically to draw Juan Pablo Montoya fans to the viewing party to see his first All-Star appearance.
SPEED TV, as part of its huge weekend coverage of the All-Star event, will be doing live cut-ins to each viewing party, starting at 4 p.m.
Kevin Harvick won the 2007 All-Star race...what can he do for Richard Childress this time around?
(Photo by Todd Warshaw/Getty Images)
Saturday night’s on-track action kicks off with the Sprint Showdown, a two-segment, 60-mile sprint at 7:30 p.m., with the top two finishers getting spots in the All-Star race. Elliott Sadler won the pole for the Showdown.
The winner of fan voting, if he finishes on the lead lap of the Showdown, also makes the feature. That man will be named after the Showdown. (Voting can be done at NASCAR.com, at Lowe’s Motor Speedway itself, at sprint.com/speed, at any Sprint retail store, or by texting “NASCAR” to “7777” on Sprint phones. Any votes on Sprints phones will count twice.
The All-Star race itself, set for a 9 o’clock green, will be four 25-lap sprints, with a 10-minute break at the end of the second segment for car adjustments. Teams pitting during that 10-minute break will be allowed to restart Segment Three in the same position they finished Segment Two.
Between Segments Three and Four, all drivers will have to make at least a pit road stop-and-go, restarting the final Segment in the order they leave pit road.
Green flag and yellow flag laps will all count in the first three sprints; only green flag laps will count in the fourth.
All restarts will be double-file. The ‘lucky dog’ free-pass rule will be used throughout the event. There will be no inverting the field for any of the segments.
One big worry among crew chiefs here, and at the upcoming mid-size track races, is that some teams will go overboard in their trick engineering of the rear-end housing:
“What’s going to happen here Saturday night? Somebody is going to lose a right-rear wheel, and I hope it doesn’t go in the grandstands,” one irate crew chief said. “They’ve got these rear-ends all jacked out of shape. Just go look at all the different rear-end housings we’ve had to bring here, to try to find one that works. But that’s the only lipstick we can put on this pig right now.
“It would be a lot easier and cheaper just to move the bodies around on the frame to get the downforce in the corners we want. But NASCAR won’t let us do that anymore.”
Jeff Gordon first raised that rear-end issue last week by pointing to one rival’s car that was so bent out of shape that it could barely roll up on the pre-race scales. And car owner Richard Childress agrees things might be getting out of hand.
NASCAR officials have shown no inclination to put any new rules in to deal with the situation, and some of the most successful teams say they’re not pushing the engineering limits, though they concede they are worried that some other teams might not be so clued in.
Kyle Busch says this All-Star event can sometimes carry more emotional baggage over the rest of the season than might ordinarily be expected. And he knows from personal experience:
“It is a big deal because of the money and the prestige on the line…but it’s also harder to get over things such as last year—when you and your own brother get together. That’s a big deal,” Kyle Busch says.
“I’ve wrecked here the past two years, getting caught up in wrecks in the last segment. The first year I think it was Kasey Kahne and somebody got together off turn two and caused a big melee. Then last year my brother and me.
“This year I’m just hoping we can start up front in all the segments and duck out and hide.
“Last year I finished second or third in the first segment; I won the second; I finished second or third in the third…and then we had the inversion.”
So Kyle Busch had to start near the rear. “I don’t remember how many cars we inverted, but it was like six or eight cars. Three or four laps into the run, I got going down the back straight, and Kurt was trying to pass Jeff Burton, and they ran through three and four side-by-side. And they didn’t come off the corner with a good run.
“I got a great run off the corner, about five mph faster than they were. I made a move to Kurt’s inside while he was just about to clear Jeff.
“Then he saw me coming and went low to block me and put me off in the grass a little. Coming up the front straight normally you go out to the wall and swing wide to get a good arc to the corner. He (Kurt) never made that wide swing; he held me low, and when we touched doors, that took all side-force off my car, and it broke the whole car loose instantly, and we both crashed.
“You can look at it and say it was my fault for making an aggressive move…but it’s the last segment of the All-Star race and you’ve got to go. And the way tires were falling off, if you got stuck behind somebody in traffic you got stuck.
“Or you could say it was Kurt’s fault he didn’t give me enough room getting into the corner.
“He blamed it on his spotter, saying he didn’t know if Burton was still out there or not. I guess he needs a better spotter.”
It was quite a while, Busch says, before he and Kurt got over that deal. “It was probably December. It was the whole year,” Kyle said. “Grandma asked for a Christmas present that we both get along and go to Christmas dinner together, so that was her present.
“It was a little edgy to begin with, because that was the first time we’d sat down together. But the more it went, the more it got back to normal.”
Being the hottest driver in NASCAR, with all the baggage that entails, and all the emotionalism, “That’s scary,” Kyle Busch says. “It’s pretty cool to have the publicity I have: Some good, some bad. To me it’s just part of this sport.
“Jeff Gordon has gone through it. Dale Earnhardt has gone through it. Everybody has pretty much had it.
“Right now it’s my game to play.
“I’m not too worried about it. I just go out there and do what I can on the track, and that’s pretty much all I worry about.
“I’m having fun. As long as I’m winning races I’m having fun.
“It’s going well.”
Well?
So well he’s adding races to his already jammed schedule: The Truck race in Texas Friday night June 6th, after a full day of Cup practice in Pocono that morning and afternoon for Sunday’s Pennsylvania 500. Then Busch will fly to Nashville Saturday June 7th for the 7:30 p.m. Nationwide race, and flying back to Pocono for the Sunday feature.
“It’ll be a fun weekend,” Busch says. “To do the three deals….does it make sense? No. Do I still think there’s a chance for a title in all three? There could be. But it would take a lot.
“This is just going to be fun, and I love racing, I love making a show out of things. So I guess it’s more PR for NASCAR: let’s help them out.”
