Bristol trifecta shows Kyle Busch is one of the greats
As Kyle Busch came to the white flag lap, his spotter Eddie D’Hondt said, “We are in the presence of greatness.”
And we are.
Remember where you were on Saturday night, when Busch became the first driver in the history of NASCAR to sweep the sport’s top three series in one weekend. Racing enthusiasts will be discussing Busch’s weekend romp for years.
“I’ve been trying to do this since I got to NASCAR, since I got my NASCAR career,” Busch said. “Fortunately, tonight I was able to get it done, be the first one to do it. I’m the first in a lot of things.”
To realize that feat at Bristol Motor Speedway, where there is danger in every corner, makes the accomplishment even more impressive.
On Wednesday night, Busch proved to be the class of the field as the owner/operator of the Kyle Busch Motorsports truck. It was Busch’s third win this season in the No. 18 Toyota Tundra and his 19th win in the Camping World Truck Series.
His Saturday night rout with Brad Keselowski was classic Bristol — and Busch. Busch dumped the Penske racer — and Nationwide Series points leader — with 30 laps remaining and sailed to his 40th win in the series.
Busch’s determination shone through in Saturday‘s Cup race. Busch led 282 of 500 laps — including the final 72 circuits — to complete the historic sweep.
“I got to his outside, we raced down the back, and it was a tight squeeze,” Busch said. “We touched doors just a little bit, but we made it through there okay. Man, I just I was actually kind of surprised at what I did. I was like, man, that was cool.”
Although Jamie McMurray challenged Busch and assumed the point on Lap 388, problems in the pits for the No. 1 team enabled the No. 18 Toyota to stay in striking distance. On Lap 428, he finally passed Reutimann and held the lead to the finish.
He referred to his winning trifecta as “pretty cool.”
“Your dreams come true at this place,” Busch said. “This is right at the top of the place. It's like winning Daytona."
Let the fans boo him. Let his fellow competitors call him names. It doesn’t matter. The animosity simply serves as a catalyst to fuel Busch’s desire to win.
Dave Rogers, who became Busch’s Cup crew chief at the start of the season, is simply enjoying the ride.
“Kyle is a special driver and in my opinion the most talented driver on the circuit,” Rogers said. “I told him before the race, there's a lot of fans out there booing him and some wise guys saying some things that were somewhat unprofessional, but it's an absolute honor to work with Kyle Busch. I couldn't be happier to do so.”
And the victories just keep coming. Since Busch ran his first full season in the Nationwide Series in 2004 and amassed five wins as a rookie, he’s collected 78 victories in NASCAR’s three top tours in seven seasons.
In comparison, Richard Petty scored 37 wins in his first seven Cup seasons — but never ran in Nationwide competition. Dale Earnhardt didn’t run his first Cup race until he was 24 and it took four additional years before he earned a full-time ride and won his race. Earnhardt scored 17 victories in his first seven seasons and didn’t compete in what is now the Nationwide Series until he was 31.
Among modern day drivers, Busch’s former teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson won 47 and 40 races in their first seven seasons. However, Gordon never bothered with trucks and in 73 Nationwide starts collected just five wins. Johnson competed in just one truck race and 91 NNS races but has one victory between the tours. In 11 seasons, Kyle’s older brother Kurt, 32, has tallied 28 wins among the three tours.
But “Rowdy” Busch is just a racer. He does not discriminate between series, tours or tracks. Once he’s finished one race, Busch moves on to the next — much to the chagrin of team president J.D. Gibbs. Yet the results show that racing — and winning — makes for a happy driver.
“I'm hard on myself and I might be hard on my guys,” Busch said. “But it boils down to wanting the desire, the desire to win, wanting to win, and just trying to work more towards our goal.”
Three weeks from now that will be NASCAR’s playoff, the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Busch’s win Saturday, his third of the season, vaulted him five positions in the point standings to third. Although with five wins, Denny Hamlin and Johnson will leap frog ahead of Busch once the points are reset, Busch is gathering momentum to make a run at the title.
“I feel like going on into Atlanta, it's going to be a test for us to see how good we are again at the mile and a half stuff, and then we got to Richmond, another one of our racetracks that I tend to run well at and Dave gave me an awesome car last time,” Busch said. “So looking forward to that, and then the Chase starts. We hit reset and we've got ten weeks to show what we've got and hopefully it's enough.”
