ALL-STAR: Kyle Busch A Solid Bet

Sprint Cup

ALL-STAR: Kyle Busch A Solid Bet

Kyle Busch's style of driving is seemingly perfect for the Sprint All-Star Race...

Jim Pedley | http://www.RacinToday.com | Posted May 20, 2011 Kansas City, KS

Kyle Busch (Center) starts first at Watkins Glen. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

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The NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race was originally planned, and is still formatted, to lend to it, an air of Saturday night short-track racing. That is, it was designed to produce action on top of excitement on top of emotion.

All of which brings to mind one driver who kind of personifies all that: Kyle Busch.

Yes, those looking for a favorite for Saturday night’s 2011 edition of the All-Star Race at high-speed, high-banked Charlotte Motor Speedway might want to take a long look at the driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.

You can bet the other drivers in the race will be.

Busch will be making his sixth start in the event this year. And brother, has he produced Saturday-night short track type excitement. In his five starts, there have been no checkers but plenty of wreckers as he has DNF’d four times.

He has scuffled so hard to get victories in the event that he has mixed it up on track with his own brother one time and issued a rhetorical threat to his own JGR teammate another time.

He has led more laps, 139, than all but two (three-time winner Jeff Gordon and two-time winner Jimmie Johnson) of the drivers who are currently qualified for Saturday’s race.

The All-Star Race just seems so Kyle Busch-ish.

“It’s hard to describe a driving style,” Busch said when asked about his. “A lot of guys would say they’re patiently aggressive. That’s the best way to look at it. I guess that’s the way I thought I was a few years ago, even though there wasn’t a lot of patience involved.”

This year, as has been described by Busch and those around his team, he has added that patience to his game.

“Now, there’s a lot more involved and I’ve gotten smarter,” Busch said. “There were plenty of times I could have made moves this year at certain points of the race and I decided to back off and wait a lap and let it happen on its own. So, it’s been a lot better and I’ve thought about things a lot more. It seems to me that success is becoming a little easier when you’re patient when you need to be, but also aggressive when you need to be.”

There is another part of the All-Star Race which plays into a Busch groove. The event features lots of restarts.

In the 2009 race, Busch put on a restart clinic.

“Yeah, the restarts were good,” he said this week. “I could jump to the front and get out there, but I couldn’t hold those guys off. It was pretty wild with the three-wide in the middle there, at one point. To me, it really seemed like it was pretty exciting the last 10 laps, and I hope we can do the same this weekend with our M&M’s Toyota and finish up front this time around.”

Busch finished seventh that year. A non-DNF, even.

Another interesting pick for Saturday night is perhaps the ultimate short-tracker in NASCAR right now: Tony Stewart.

Stewart was, perhaps, the best ever in USAC. He’s raced on dirt and asphalt in everything from midgets to winged sprint cars. And won. He loves racing NASCAR races in the heat of the summer because the slick tracks play right into the skills he used on Midwestern short tracks.

And he loves the All-Star atmosphere.

“Trust me, we all think of the trophy first and the money second,” Stewart said. “But it’s fun to know that you can take extra chances in that race and you know that everybody is going to do it, so it just takes the whole level of racing and just takes it up a whole new level that we don’t get a chance to do when we’re racing (the normal schedule).”

Stewart has won the event once – in 2009. And, with seven top-fives, he always seems in contention. Unless, that is, he is wrecking while going for victory – he has four DNFs in 12 starts.

Johnson has the two victories in his nine All-Star starts. But it his incredible record at Charlotte Motor Speedway as a whole that has to make him a serious contender for victory on Saturday night.

Six times he has won points races at CMS. He once won four in a row there. He has not been quite as formidable there since they repaved the track in 2006, but with five years and many thousands of laps on it, that new surface is starting to rough up.

Jimmie Johnson is the new Sprint Cup points leader. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

“I enjoy that track,” Johnson says. “The old track, and how rough it was and abrasive it was, really fit my style. We had a great setup for it and I knew how to drive the track. The rougher the track, the better in my opinion; I seem to do better at those tracks. So, in time, the track will get there. It changes a little bit each year and we’ll see where it is now. But I’m looking forward to it.”

Last year, Johnson led the event twice for a race-best 56 laps. Could have won, he said.

“I think we had a great shot to win last year’s All-Star Race and led late and I think we had a problem on pit road and came out third and restarted inside of the No. 11 (Hamlin) and spun out with, I think, just a lap or two to go,” Johnson said. “It was one of those make-it or break-it moves. I needed to get by him if I was going to have a shot at the No. 2 (Kurt Busch), and I just didn’t have that opportunity. So I just went out and went through the grass off of Turn 4 down the frontstretch. So, we’re there.”

Three-time winner Gordon should be considered a threat as well. Two-time winner Mark Martin is in the field and capable of finessing his way to a victory.

At least eight former winners will be in the race and at least five Cup champions will be in.

Jim Pedley is a veteran, award-winning sports journalist who has worked at, among other places, the Boston Globe, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Kansas City Star. Pedley can be reached at jpedley@racintoday.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Pedley

RacinToday.com

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