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Kyle Busch celebrates after winning the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at the Infineon Raceway. (Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images Photo) ยป More Photos
Party time’s over, folks. The next time the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series has a schedule break will be Thanksgiving, a concept hard to fathom given that it’s hotter than you-know-what in most parts of the country right now.
Sunday’s Allstate 400 at the Brickyard begins a stretch of 17 consecutive weekends of Sprint Cup racing spread from New Hampshire to Southern California to, finally, the Florida Keys in mid-November. It’s as grueling a stretch as there is in racing.
And it’s also a reminder that it’s time to step it up for the teams that have any aspirations at all for the championship. Just seven races remain in NASCAR’s regular season and when the checkered flag falls at Richmond International Raceway in September, the field will be locked in for the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Of course, that might all be academic if Kyle Busch keeps winning. Right now, Busch has a 262-point lead over second-place Dale Earnhardt Jr. Just to put that number into context, Busch’s margin over Earnhardt is larger than the gap from fifth-place Jimmie Johnson to 13th-place Clint Bowyer.
Or you could put it this way: Busch has won as many races by himself as the 12 drivers at Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing and Richard Childress Racing have combined to win. That’s dominance.
With race victories paying 10-point bonuses, if the Chase began right now, Busch would have a 50-point lead over Kasey Kahne and Carl Edwards,
The key word here being “should.”
Without question, Busch is having a remarkable season, one where he has a chance to break NASCAR’s Modern Era victory record of 13 shared by Richard Petty and Jeff Gordon.
But is he unstoppable? Has he, in essence, already won the title?
Not yet. Not by a long shot. There are still plenty of obstacles out there for Busch to avoid. Here are a few:
Racing luck could catch up with him. No disrespect to Busch or his Joe Gibbs Racing crew, but so far in 2008, he’s gotten all the good luck on his team that his fellow drivers Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin haven’t. Hamlin led 381 laps at Richmond, only to lose to a flat tire. Stewart cut a tire while leading the Coca-Cola 600 on Lap 398 of 400. Stewart got wrecked on Lap 498 at Bristol after leading 267 laps, while in the same race, Hamlin’s engine sputtered on a restart two laps from victory. Stewart led 132 laps at New Hampshire, only to lose on fuel mileage at the end.
You get the idea. Sooner or later, racing luck within JGR will change. That’s the way it always happens. The only question is, when will it happen? If it’s next year, Busch wins the 2008 title in a runaway. But if it happens during NASCAR’s playoff round this season, Busch could be vulnerable.
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