Monday, April 28, 2008
Kyle Busch’s seven NASCAR wins make him a major championship contender…and he’s only 22
Double-decker fans: the 156,000 at Talladega got their money’s worth Sunday
(Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)
By Mike Mulhern
TALLADEGA, Ala.
So Kyle Busch once again upstaged the man Rick Hendrick hired to replace him – Dale Earnhardt Jr. – with a cool move to win Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Speedway, for so long a doomsday race track for the soon-to-be-23 Busch.
And Busch’s victory, over Dodge surprise Juan Pablo Montoya and Toyota teammate Denny Hamlin in a rockin’ 500-miler at NASCAR’s biggest track, certainly boosted the spirits of car owners Joe and J. D. Gibbs, who were blindside a few days ago by Tony Stewart’s announcement that he was looking at leaving the Gibbs operation.
Busch, however, downplayed his one-upsmanship battle with Hendrick…despite Busch’s seven NASCAR touring wins already this spring, to Earnhardt’s zero.
“I left there on some pretty good terms with all the guys,” Busch was saying Sunday evening as a long-threatened downpour finally blasted the Grant Lynch-Rick Humphries track. “I’ve got a lot of great friends over there in that organization, with the guys on the team and guys in resources.
“Even Rick came over to the car just before the race and wished me good luck.
“So there’s no hard feelings there, no shoving it in their face saying ‘I’m better than you, or anything like that.’
“It’s just go out there and do the best I possibly can for myself and these guys with Job Gibbs Racing.”
Well, Busch has clearly made his point in just the season’s first few months, with two Sprint Cup wins, three Nationwide Saturday wins, and two Truck wins. That 23rd birthday party in a few days ought to be quite a shindig.
Kyle Busch! The best driver in stock car racing? He makes a great case again at Talladega
(Photo Credit: Jeff Gross/Getty Images)
Sunday’s race was surprising in several areas: Carl Edwards, a three-time Cup winner this year, was victim several times of right-front tires problems. Tony Stewart, while trying to rally from a cut tire of his own, got tangled up in a big crash that took him and buddy Earnhardt out, after the two had dominated much of the race. And Montoya was tough, again.
Indeed, this was a race for the aggressive.
The most aggressive man in the race might well have been Hamlin.
Denny Hamlin—may be the hardest bump-drafter in NASCAR
(Photo credit: Toyota Motorsports)
And Busch and his teammate didn’t see eye to eye on some moves early in the race, and that revived questions about the two from Daytona. But Busch didn’t care to discuss the issue:
“I was a little upset when Denny—we were running 1-2-3, and Tony was leading, I was second, and Denny was third – and the bump-drafting got a little aggressive and he knocked me out of the way and went on to get behind Tony, and I had to fall back a few spots.
“Luckily I only fell back to seventh or eighth.
“I’m in a good spot, where I want to be, driving this car…and what Denny does or Tony does sometimes out there during the race, sometimes you’re not going to be happy with the moves they make. But you go on with it, you salvage it—and guess what: I won, and that’s all that matters.”
When all the smoke finally cleared at Talladega, Kyle Busch was holding the trophy
(Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)
The best race of the season? “For sure it’s the best race we’ve had,” Hamlin said.
“Daytona was really good too. This race had the same complexion like the last three races here – single-file, everyone taking their time, didn’t want to do anything crazy till the end.”
Well, for Hamlin all that obviously is relative, because much of the racing was four-wide and very aggressive, Montoya said.
“I thought it was a great race, I think this package is really right where it needs to be for a superspeedway, so I really commend NASCAR for all the adjustments they’ve made to this car for superspeedway racing,” Hamlin said.
Busch on the other hand says he wants to see the replays before he pours out too many adjectives: “I’ll have to watch it. From where I was sitting, there were some times I was running in a three-car draft and I was bored as hell.
“There were times it got pretty impatient, and guys were making bold moves and bump-drafting, and it got a little crazy. But it all worked out.”
Penske teammates Ryan Newman (right) and Kurt Busch went 1-2 in February’s Daytona 500. At Talladega they ran eighth and 39th.
(Photo Credit: Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR)
One thing surprising was that drivers generally managed to avoid crashing, despite all the hard hits. The new rear wing on these cars appears to help drivers avoid spinning out.
Busch, during an early series of pit stops, got trapped in the outside line on pit road and couldn’t cut across into his pit. So he had to go back around the track and try again, and he wound up a lap down, needing to recover.
“At that point, where we missed pit road, coming down, I was mad as hell. But we straightened it up.
“These races are so long; I looked at the scoreboard and saw there were 100 laps to go, and I figure there’s got to be another caution.”
Kyle Busch celebrates at Talladega, his seventh win in NASCAR’s top three series
(Photo Credit: Jeff Gross/Getty Images)
Busch played the draft with aplomb. “I was running fourth or fifth late, and got a bump-draft, and a huge line, and got into Jamie McMurray there. And I don’t know what happened with that scenario, but we were able to straighten up and keep going.
“Juan was pushing me, all the way to the front, and we stayed together.
“And Michael Waltrip and Jimmie Johnson did the same thing (on an outside run, briefly past Busch and Montoya into the lead).
“Jeff Gordon got in behind me somehow, and Jeff was pushing me, and we bump-drafted Jimmie out of the way, and Jeff pushed me past Jimmie. That was cool. Then we got Jeff shut out of line, by Juan.
“And it was me and Juan and Denny at the end.”
Steve Addington, Busch’s new crew chief, says Busch has amazed him this spring: “I’m really proud of him being patient when we got the lap down. If we could just hang in there, we had a good enough car…”
Talladega’s pit road was so jammed at times that Kyle Busch couldn’t even get across traffic into his pit, and lost a lap...which made for a dramatic comeback rally.
(Photo Credit: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
For Addington, this season so far has been a dream-come-true, after some nightmarish years: “You look at the last three years, they haven’t been really good.
“I’m just thankful to be with an organization that knew what was going on.
“We’ve been very, very fortunate Kyle has in, and he’s getting better.”
Sunday was a wildly emotional day all the way around for car owner Joe Gibbs. “When you have a team like this, with three cars, the emotions are all over the place.
“First, you’re upset because Kyle and pit road and he winds up a lap down. Then you have Tony leading the race and all of a sudden Tony cuts a tire. And you’ve got Denny real strong and all of a sudden he gets shuffled all over the place.
“Mid-race you figure there’s no way Kyle is going to have a chance to win it.”
Tony Stewart was the man to beat at Talladega, until a cut tire put him back in the pack, and then a bump in traffic during his comeback triggered a big wreck with only 30 miles to go
(Photo Credit: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
The final miles were a three-man race, Busch leading, with Montoya and Hamlin right behind. And without the race-ending caution on that last lap, before Montoya and Hamlin could make a move on Busch, well, there was plenty of speculation.
“We never tell our drivers what to do, other than ‘Hey, you’ve got teammates, and we’d like to treat each other as teammates,’” Gibbs said.
“Certainly towards the end of races, it’s every man for himself.”
The aggressive bump-drafting, Busch said added considerable speed to a two-some making a move.
“With these cars, the rear bumpers are high and front bumpers are low, so we can bump-draft all the way through the corner,” Busch says.
“NASCAR doesn’t like it….but when you have two guys who know what they are doing and keep their cars straight, it really works.
“Denny was doing it a lot today, and I felt comfortable with it.
“When cars get side-by-side, they get stuck (lose speed), so it takes bump-drafting to get through.”
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