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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Kyle Busch Seeks Hometown Repeat
Kyle Busch is the defending winner of the Shelby American...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted February 24, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Kyle Busch is looking for a return to victory lane in this weeks NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Shelby American at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

The Prodigal Son is hoping for good fortune upon his return home.

Kyle Busch, the Las Vegas native and defending winner of the Shelby American NASCAR Sprint Cup race, would like nothing more than a repeat of last season's performance when he visits Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend.

And, truth is, Busch could stand to have a little luck on his side after finishing 14th in both the season-opening Daytona 500 and last week's Auto Club 500 in Southern California. Busch's Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas have been respectably fast at those two events, but he hasn't been able to seal the deal either time.

This week, though, Busch said he's ready to get back up front and contend for another victory, having not won since Bristol Motor Speedway last August.

Last year, Busch qualified on the pole at LVMS, but an engine change during Friday's practice meant he would have to start at the back of the field. By Lap 54, he was in the lead and on the way to victory, a triumph that he even today Busch cherishes.

“It was the biggest so far. It was awesome, just the feeling of a lifetime,” he said of last year's Vegas victory. “I told everyone that it would be just like another race, but it really meant a lot more than that when I got to victory lane. To have my mom there, and my brother come to victory lane, just made it that much more special. We didn’t have the best car last year, but I feel like I drove a smart race, anyway, and did what we needed to do. We worked on it all day and kept making it better.”

A good run again this week would help Busch erase a bad memory from 2009 — missing the Chase for the Sprint Cup, which in turn meant he wasn't up on stage when Las Vegas hosted the Cup banquet for the first time last December.

“I wanted to be in it. You want to be in it any year, but knowing that it was coming to Vegas, it was going to be cool to be in the top-12 and come out for the banquet,” said Busch. “Unfortunately, things didn’t quite work out to our advantage in order to get ourselves in the Chase, but we’re looking to change that around. We’ve got a lot of good things coming up for this year with Dave Rogers as our crew chief. The final three races last year, he brought a lot to the table and we learned a lot. We got going a little bit better, I felt like. We ran well in our first two races and had good cars, but things just didn’t fall our way. I’m hoping we can find a little more luck this week than we have so far in the Cup Series this year.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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