He’s been attacked for immaturity, not just by fans but by some in the racing media after some post-race behavior at New Hampshire. The criticism has dogged him periodically through what is still a recent career at NASCAR’s big league level. Yet after falling out of the Delaware 400 with the second straight mechanical failure of the Chase, Kyle Busch showed he now has the right attitude.
“We’re out of the title hunt,” he said afterward. This strongly suggested that the time for caring about points was now over as far as he was concerned. And this is the right attitude to have.
The fact is that no one who seriously believes that he can win the championship is racing for wins; it’s all points racing all the time, and while points racing had taken precedence in seasons before the Chase format was imposed upon the series, the playoff format has exacerbated the practice all the more. Greg Biffle won the first two Chase races, yet despite being reracked from 596 points out of the lead to 80 with the start of the Chase Biffle still did not lead the points standings after Dover; instead Carl Edwards, winless in the Chase so far, was the point leader and Jimmie Johnson was tied with Biffle for second despite being beaten by Biffle in both Chase races.
Now this looks like an awesome points race, right? Wrong. It’s a point race where, now that he’s within ten points of the lead, Biffle has to just maintain a high average finish, and the other two drivers in the top three – Edwards and Johnson – likewise have to maintain an average finish that is the best of the three. And amid all that, everyone else in the Chase is as realistically out of contention as Busch – Jeff Burton enters Kansas in fourth place in points but 82 out. Winning races, as seen with Biffle’s mediocre rally into contention, means little; if anything it is almost a detriment to winning the championship.
So I expect Kyle Busch now to worry only about winning races, which is the proper attitude of ANY racer. The final eight of 2008 shows two tracks that stand out as a weakness for the #18, but all the others look like victory bids. He’s been radically uneven at Kansas before, but it is similar to Chicagoland where Busch won in July; he won at Talladega in April; he was good at Charlotte in May.
The first of his weak tracks is Martinsville, where he was 38th in April, and in seven previous starts there he’s finished out of the top-15 three times and two of those were in the bottom ten; he’s also led only two races there.
Every other race in the Chase but one looks good for him – he won at Atlanta in March; he finished in the top ten at Phoenix in April; he’s finished in the top five in three of his last four Texas starts. But the season wraps at Homestead, where Busch has never finished higher than 20th in three previous starts.
With six winnable races in the last ten, the odds for Busch exceeding ten wins look good, and having proclaimed his title hopes gone, I expect Busch to race for those wins and just let the points fall where they will. And that is the right attitude to have for a racer.