Kyle Busch - The Glass is Half-Full at Halfway Point
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. (July 1, 2008) – There are two types of people in this world: those who see the glass as half-empty and those who see it as half-full.
So, as the grinding marathon that is the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series hits the official halfway point of the season with its return to Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway for Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400, the glass appears to be half-full for Kyle Busch.
Busch, driver of the No. 18 Interstate Batteries Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), has given himself and his new team plenty of reason for optimism after the first 17 races of 2008.
While NASCAR pundits openly wondered how quickly he would adapt to his new team at JGR, new crew chief Steve Addington, and new manufacturer Toyota, Busch took no time to set the tone for the season with a strong performance in the 50th Daytona 500, where he led a race-high eight times for 86 laps en route to a solid fourth-place finish.
That answered that. In the 16 races since, Busch, Addington, and the No. 18 team have excelled at seemingly every track they set their four Goodyears on while achieving new benchmarks along the way.
The first one crossed off the checklist came at the lightning-fast Atlanta Motor Speedway, where Busch and the No. 18 team dominated by leading a race-high eight times for 173 laps and brought Toyota its first Sprint Cup win, Busch’s first win on a 1.5-mile track, and the No. 18 team’s first victory since former JGR driver Bobby Labonte brought the No. 18 Interstate Batteries car home a winner in the 2003 season-ending race at Homestead (Fla.) Miami Speedway.
Next, Busch proved he could conquer a track that had always been an Achilles heel – the 2.66-mile Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway. The 23-year-old quickly checked his first Sprint Cup restrictor plate win off his to-do list in April in the Aaron’s 499.
Then, he tackled two other personal behemoths by notching dominating victories at the tricky 1.33-mile egg shaped Darlington (S.C.) Raceway and the high-banked Monster Mile of Dover (Del.) International Speedway.
Finally, Busch showed there are no longer any types of tracks he couldn’t win on when he and the No. 18 team led twice for a race-high 78 laps on his way to victory lane at the 12-turn, 1.99-mile Infineon Raceway road course in Sonoma, Calif.
In all, Busch has led a series-high 869 of the 5,263 total laps run (16.51 percent) in Sprint Cup competition this season while racking up five wins, two poles and 11 top-five finishes – all as he holds a 64-point lead over second-place Jeff Burton in the driver standings.
Despite his success through the first half of the season, the Las Vegas native knows it won’t mean much unless he and the team stay the course with nine races to go before the 10-race Chase for the Championship. That, of course, would be the lead item on every driver’s to-do list, and Busch can safely say he’s halfway there already.
KYLE BUSCH: Driver, No. 18 Interstate Batteries Toyota Camry
Now that we’re a checkered flag away from the season’s halfway point, is there a particular moment that you look at as one of the most memorable so far this season for you and the No. 18 team?
“I think being able to bring Toyota its first-ever Sprint Cup win at Atlanta early in the season was really special. Also, winning the Toyota race at Infineon Raceway was also really cool. For me, to be able to put myself on the list of road-course winners, that was pretty special, too.”
There have been a lot of changes for you this year, between working with a new team at JGR, having a new crew chief in Steve Addington, and JGR switching to Toyota. Which one of those has been the key to the team’s success this season?
“I’d have to say that the organization has been the biggest thing. With Joe Gibbs Racing being as good as they have been this year, and all the guys at the shop who have done an awesome job of switching the cars to Toyota and doing as much as they’ve done in the off-season and the first half of the actual season. Toyota has also done a great job of helping get us some horsepower at the restrictor-plate tracks, and Mark (Cronquist) and all the engine guys have been working really hard on getting our package better on the other tracks. We’ve got a lot of stuff working for us right now. It just starts with all the top-notch people we have throughout the shop.”
Unfortunately, you can’t go back and do a race over. But if you could, which previous race would you like to take a Mulligan?
“Probably Pocono comes to mind. We just didn’t run very well there. There are some other tracks that, by lap 100, we would have liked to push the reset button. But when you look at the end of the race, we are right up front and finish there. Probably as a whole, Pocono hurt us the most. Steve Addington and all the guys just never give up, so there are races that started off much worse than they ended up because we just kept working on the car and got it close to right, if not really good, at the end.”
How does it feel to hear compliments on what a great season you’re having and how much talent you have?
“It feels pretty special to have people compliment me on my talents. It’s cool, for sure. But the only way to make it worthwhile is to keep it going in the future. Overall, things are going well now, but if I can keep this stretch going and keep it up for six, seven, eight years down the road, that would be really cool.”
How does Daytona change from when you raced there in February to when you return during the summer in July?
“We had a really good race car at Daytona in February, so I’m expecting to go back there and run well again this weekend. With that being said, the race track changes in the summertime because it gets so slick. Running the race at night helps, but there is still going to be some single-file action and some guys getting spread out because handling has been key with the new cars. So far, these cars have been hard to get the handle on, so it should be interesting how some of the drivers and crew chiefs are going to get their cars to handle when the race track will be much more slippery than February.”
You got your first restrictor-plate win earlier this season at Talladega. What’s the difference in mindset between Talladega and Daytona, where you will be this weekend?
“Everyone can pretty much run in a big pack at Talladega because it’s so smooth. But handling becomes the issue at Daytona, and that’s the big difference. At Daytona, you can sense the feel of the car enough to communicate to the crew chief about what you need and how you want your car to handle. I’ve always been able to run out front at Daytona and stay out of trouble, which has been nice.”
You’ve now had three restrictor-plate races under your belt with NASCAR’s current-generation car. What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned about the current car under drafting conditions?
“Before, if you got a big run, you could try to pull out and get around somebody and you could about clear them. Now, when you get side-by-side, you’re both punching such a big hole in the air, so when you first pull out, you hit that brick wall of air. When you get up side-by-side with somebody, then you are both punching such a big hole that you just get stuck side-by-side where, before, you could almost clear and get past the guy. So it’s a lot different, there. There’s just a lot more slow-down now than there was.”
