CUP: Kyle Busch Slows Down

Sprint Cup

CUP: Kyle Busch Slows Down

Kyle Busch hopes splitting Nationwide duties with brother Kurt leads to less stress...

Bob Pockrass | http://www.scenedaily.com | Posted January 21, 2012 Mooresville, NC

Brothers Kyle (Right) and Kurt Busch (Left) are sharing a Nationwide Series ride in 2012. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

When Kyle Busch made the fateful decision to wreck Ron Hornaday Jr. under caution at Texas Motor Speedway last November, he said he had been wrecked four weeks in a row in his truck and had had enough of it.

Busch cracked under the frustration of running in the Camping World Truck Series, and it cost him on a much bigger scale as NASCAR suspended him for the rest of the weekend’s events, which included the Nationwide Series and Sprint Cup races.

The 26-year-old Busch will avoid such frustration in 2012. He will run only 13-15 Nationwide races – all for his own Kyle Busch Motorsports team – and no truck races.

“I would think that [running fewer races] alleviates some stress and some opportunities for certain things to happen and give you a break from some of that,” Busch said following the announcement that Monster Energy Drink would sponsor KBM’s first entry into the Nationwide Series.

Kyle’s brother, Kurt, who will drive in the races that Kyle doesn’t compete in for KBM, said that his brother will be able to handle running a limited schedule.

“He’s married now,” Kurt quipped. “He needs to take a step back. He needs to take his wife and go play putt-putt on a Saturday afternoon.”

Kurt said that it’s important for Kyle to take that a step back as the leader of a race team that Kyle would like to move to Sprint Cup one day.

“I’m sure he’ll be up there [on the pit box] with a headset on,” Kurt Busch said. “We’ll be going back and forth. There could be some good radio chatter to come out of us. … All that he needs to do is to put on that ownership role, and that’s where he needs to settle in.

“That will teach him a lot about what this building means all the way around.”

Kurt will play a key role in Kyle’s ability to handle a reduced schedule. Kyle did cut back some in 2011 as he ran “only” 71 races in the three national series. That was 10 fewer than in previous years as he competed in 81 races in 2010, 86 in 2009 and 84 in 2008.

Now, with approximately 50 races on his schedule, Kyle will have more free time on Saturdays, perhaps avoiding some of the setbacks and incidents that could impact him for the rest of the race weekend. He also will help his brother make his own transition after a recent offseason when he was released by Penske Racing after a series of emotional outbursts inside and outside the car. Busch, the 2004 Cup champion, also will race for Phoenix Racing this season, running the full Cup schedule and select Nationwide events for the team.

“Both of us can help each other from our past mistakes but also for our future endeavors,” Kyle Busch said. “This is something that I want to see grow. I don’t think Kurt wants me to see this place shut down, so he is going to help me as much as he can, too.

“Part of that is how we handle certain situations. There’s going to be certain situations where you’ve got to react in different ways than before. … It’s a learning curve. This year will be another one of those experiences with all of us.”

Busch said his Cup team owner, Joe Gibbs, didn’t want him to run truck series events. JGR also opted not to have Busch run any Nationwide races for its team even though it had announced that Busch would run some races last October.

“There’s a couple of limitations,” Kyle Busch said about his agreements with JGR on what he does with KBM. “The Nationwide Series, they said, ‘Go do your deal, it’s obviously something that’s really important to you.’ I’ve collaborated with them about this whole deal the whole time, so it’s not a surprise to them.

“I also brought them an associate sponsorship [from Monster] along with it. The truck stuff? They said, ‘We’d rather you not run truck races.’ So it’s not necessarily a ‘no’ but it’s a highly recommend ‘leave the trucks alone.’”

Because he can’t run for the series title in the Nationwide Series, Busch said he doesn’t mind only running a dozen or so events in the series where he has won a record 51 races.

“I would still run a full season if I could go for points, but if I can’t go for points, it doesn’t make any sense,” Kyle Busch said. “I’m all about running the major companions that make sense to me to get experience at in the beginning part of the year, the places we go to twice or the places I seem to struggle at in the past.”

Because his KBM organization is new and he doesn’t have owner points from 2011, Kyle Busch will drive in the first five races in 2012 and use his past champion’s provisional to get into races if something happens during qualifying.

Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 18 M&M's Toyota, sits on the pit box after being parked by NASCAR for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Kyle indicated he wanted to run at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where he seems to struggle. The brothers will split the non-companion races where they must fly back and forth from the Cup to the Nationwide venues. A final schedule of who will do which race has not been determined, but Kurt said he will be flying to Road America in Wisconsin during the Sonoma Cup weekend.

Dave Rogers, Kyle’s Cup crew chief, told Kyle to keep the final 10 weeks in Cup free of distractions, and Kyle said he believes he’ll only run a couple of Nationwide races during the Chase.

“It allows you to kind of relax a little bit,” Kyle Busch said about not racing Saturdays. “I can spend some time – instead of having to think about race cars all the time or be in a race car through so many practice sessions – I can go out on the grid and spend some time with the Monster folks or whoever.

“And [I can] watch Kurt race and sit on the pit box and just kind of listen versus being out there, getting wore out, getting wore down, getting in a situation that might hinder my thinking for Sunday.”

Ironically, Busch will be replaced in the Joe Gibbs Racing Nationwide car in select races by Mark Martin, the driver whose record Busch broke last year.

Busch has 104 career victories in the three NASCAR national series. He has 51 in Nationwide, 30 in truck and 23 in Cup. Busch has said he wants to hit 200.

“Hopefully I’ve got a long time ahead of me and I’ve got a lot of races ahead of me where I can get those wins to achieve the 200-win total,” Kyle Busch said.

“But we’ve got to get in victory lane first [in Nationwide] with Kyle Busch Motorsports and then from there, hopefully we can tear up the track.”

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