A new season of car fights begins this weekend on Florida’s east coast. And while the campaign may be interminably long and fraught with all the unpredictability that arises at 180 mph, there is at least this one certainty:
Kyle Busch won’t be driving those Triple-A cars at Daytona anymore.
It was a year ago that your defending Sprint Car champion, running in an Xfinity series car the day before the Daytona 500, scratching his itch to drive anything that internally combusts, crashed into an inside wall at the speedway. Busch suffered a shattered right leg and left foot, which makes keeping pedal to metal especially difficult.
A very important member of his team confronted Busch that night at the hospital, laying down the law about running any more races at restrictor-plate tracks — Daytona and Talladega — than were absolutely necessary. The pack nature of restrictor-plate racing makes everybody nervous.
“Samantha was like: You’re not doing these restrictor-plate races anymore. Then she had a conversation with Joe,” Busch said. Samantha’s his wife. Joe Gibbs is the owner of his car.
It had to be difficult telling someone who would race Shriner’s clown cars if NASCAR would sanction them to slow a tad. Busch has won 154 races across three NASCAR series — Sprint Car, Xfinity and Truck. He is one of the sport’s more fervent competitors, whose aggressiveness on the track has not always played well with the masses on the other side of the catch fence.
But, as he said, “When I hit the wall at 90 G’s, that was the inclination that we don’t need to be doing (Xfinity at Daytona) anymore.”
His reluctant decision to cut back increases exponentially Busch’s chances of:
A. Actually making it to Sunday’s Great American Race. Running in the Daytona 500, a race Busch has yet to win, is much preferable to watching it on TV from your hospital bed, we can only assume.
B. Then making it to Atlanta the following weekend, if everything goes OK in Daytona. The race at Atlanta Motor Speedway is one of 11 that Busch missed while on the mend, and AMS is a place that dearly suits him. He has won twice there in Sprint Cup, as well as four other victories in the Truck Series.
C. Trying to win another series championship, this time while not spotting the rest of the field nearly one-third of the season. Busch runs with a fast crowd, one that hardly needs a head start.
Maturity in this sport often comes with the soundtrack of crumpling sheet metal. A rookie of the year in 2005 and a series champion at the age of 30, Busch recognizes the changes wrought over that time, ones that only accelerated last season.
“I’m different for sure, growing up a little bit through the injury. Having to come back, never having been on the sidelines for that long. Having to see other drivers drive your car, seeing the sport go on without you. Becoming a dad (son Brexton was born in May). Turning 30. It was all a big deal,” Busch said.
The story of his 2015 Sprint Cup title followed the most unlikely arc. It wouldn’t exactly be like the Braves winning the division after not playing the first 50 games of the season, but you get the idea.
The Gibbs of Gibbs Racing was Joe Theismann’s coach when the Washington Redskins’ quarterback had his career ended by a gruesome broken leg in 1985. Someone recently asked him if Busch’s injury wasn’t a little reminiscent of that, and Gibbs didn’t dismiss that as complete hyperbole.
Busch’s Gibbs Racing teammate, Carl Edwards, lumped the injury into the career-threatening class.
“When he came back, no joke, the question wasn’t how many races is he going to win. The question was is he going to be OK, is he going to be able to drive?” Edwards said.
“I’ve learned Kyle is one tough guy. If you start right from the moment he got out of the car at Daytona — he just got out and pointed at his legs like, hey, they’re broken. Then he got back in the car when he could and dominated in the summer and won the championship.
“I don’t think that’s normal. I don’t think that’s normal at all.”
NASCAR granted Busch a waiver when he returned, giving him the chance to qualify for Sprint Cup Chase if he could win a race and climb into the top 30 in points standings before the end of the 26-race regular season.
Within a month of his return, he had his first victory, beating his brother Kurt at Sonoma. In five-race stretch, he won four times. A victory at the season-ending race in Homestead may have denied Jeff Gordon a magical send-off, but it did round out one remarkable comeback.
After a decade chasing a championship, watching his brother win one in front of him, being that guy with all the talent but no title, here was Busch finally winning it all when a championship seemed least likely.
“Maybe that’s why it happened,” Busch philosophized.
So, what does he do for an encore?
Maybe win a second championship while driving with his helmet on backward. Or campaign in a 2003 Prius. Or perhaps take off the first month of the season to write a children’s book.
Actually, the plan is to try to go at this season in a much more conventional, smarter way. Go the distance. Try to keep all his bones in place. Maybe win at some places and in some races that he never has before (Daytona 500, any race at Charlotte, Martinsville, Pocono or Kansas).
There are still goals to meet, and they require him to remain an outpatient.
Said Busch, “For myself and (crew chief) Adam Stevens — what’s better than one championship? Two. What’s better than two? Getting three.
“Hopefully starting at the Daytona 500.”
Simply starting there Sunday would mark a great improvement.
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