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Warning: Objects in this post may be the only way to successfully live through the NASCAR off-season. For best results, read rearview mirror early and often.
Driver: Kyle Busch
Team: No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota
'08 Final Standing: 10th (-498)
Best Race: Eight Wins
Worst Race: Pocono & Dover (43rd-place)
Season in a box: For much of 2008 season, an odds-on bet would have said Kyle Busch would have been receiving first-place honors at the New York City awards banquet. Instead, the eight-win Busch fell flat when it mattered and ended up taking the stage first for the season-ending festivities.
If there ever was an award for winning the "regular season" of the NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule -- the first 26 races before the Chase for the Sprint Cup -- Kyle Busch would have walked away a happy man thanks to a late spring and mid-summer stretch that saw the hotshoe Hendrick-to-Gibbs transfer driver blowing out the competition on every track and car type possible.
He won at mile-and-a-halfs, road courses, superspeedways and even in the Nationwide & Craftsman truck series. Kyle Busch was red hot with 21 total NASCAR trophies in 2008, but as only a writer could script it, it all came crashing down by the time the season got important.
A suspension failure in the first Chase race was followed by an engine failure at Dover and then another mechanical problem at Kansas eliminated any title hopes for the driver -- leaving him finishing the lowest among his two other teammates at JGR.
Through the crystal windshield:If you really think Kyle Busch's success was somehow a fluke in 2008, I'd suggest a trip to your favorite mental health professional.
Sure, his equipment was top notch and in the lower series (see: Trucks) he wasn't always competeing against the best, but taking home 21 total victories -- including eight in the Sprint Cup -- is a feat normally reserved for computer simulation drivers.
We learned this team can have significant problems and that keeping Busch under control in adversity is a tough measure, but more experience and a knowledge of what the Toyota package can do in 2009 for the recent convert that JGR is will only bode well for Busch.
You want a guy who can unseat Jimmie Johnson from the top of the mountain? Look no further than Kyle Busch.
Next up: Tony Stewart
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