Busch Series legends look back as final race nears (cont'd)

Want to know how much the Busch Series has changed? When Green took the green flag in Daytona that afternoon, he'd just turned 33 years old a few weeks before. A little more than two months later, Green won at Gainesville, Ga.'s Lanier Raceway in just the ninth race of the season. At the time, it was the quickest any rookie had ever made it to Victory Lane.

Still, leave it to the media to ruin a special moment.

Jason Keller

This past October at Lowe's Motor Speedway, Jason Keller became the all-time starts leader in the Busch Series taking the green flag for the 418th time.

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"I was very proud of the fact that I'd won so early in my rookie season," Green said. "I'll never forget some reporter saying after the race, 'It was a good night, but there's no Cup guys here.' I'll never forget the feeling, it was like yesterday. I was so full of energy, and all of a sudden, my balloon was popped."

The difference between then and now, Green says, is that Cup drivers then drove for independent Busch owners. Harry Gant wheeled Ed Whitaker's car. Dale Jarrett's effort was backed by Horace Isenhour. Earnhardt and Darrell Waltrip drove their own stuff, but their teams were completely separate from the Cup entries.

What good, after all, was information on a Busch V-6 engine going to do for a Cup V-8 powerplant? It just didn't translate.

"They drove for themselves or guys like Horace Isenhour or Ed Whitaker," Green said. "Those gentlemen were just Busch Series owners. Earnhardt didn't have RCR engines in his car, so there was really no connection [between the Cup and Busch divisions], other than just the driver and the helmet. That's why I think they were under the radar, and you viewed them as pretty much just regular ol' guys."

Ask Keller to name the biggest win of his career, and there's really no hesitation.

"Dover," he interjects. "Passed Mark Martin for the win." End of story.

Oh, Keller's first career Busch win at Indianapolis Raceway Park was big, because he won with a team owned by his father, Joe, and many of the crew members who'd followed him from the South Carolina dirt tracks. But throwing down with Martin, and passing him one-on-one, fair-and-square late in the race?

That was huge.

One of LaJoie's biggest victories came at Darlington, where Jeff Burton passed him for the lead coming off Turn 2 on the final lap, only to have LaJoie take it right back between the treacherous Turns 3 and 4. So, no, these guys have no particular gripe against Cup drivers in the Busch Series. It's what was to come, what's taking place right now that has their attention.

HOW IT CHANGED

Johnny Benson drove the No. 74 BACE Motorsports Chevrolet to the 1995 Busch championship. When Benson moved to the Cup circuit, LaJoie took over and went on to capture the 1996 and '97 titles. Owner Bill Baumgardner's three consecutive championships were and still are unprecedented, and he had no backing from a Cup team. He didn't need it.

Today, a Busch team can't compete for a championship without Cup participation. Only one other non-Cup-affiliated team -- Jeff Green and ppc Racing in 2000 -- has been able to win the Busch Series championship since LaJoie's reign ended.

"Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. changed the Busch Series," LaJoie said. "As any father would do for his son, Big E gave Junior whatever he needed. When they came in, they brought the Busch Series to the next level. Then, RCR saw that and started pouring money into the Busch car. Gibbs saw it. Roush saw it. Ganassi has seen it. When those five main guys started putting money and technology into the Busch Series, it's dwindled the ownership terribly.

"If you look across the board, you're only gonna have a handful of owners that own everything. When I first started, you didn't have multi-car teams. You have 43 different owners in the Busch Series. Now, you've only got a handful, and they've all got their 18-to-25-year-old kids. An older guy's not gonna get a job."

Another important ingredient in the evolution of the Busch Series has been the gradual transformation of its cars into ones nearly identical to those found in the Nextel Cup garage. To the naked eye, there's virtually no difference in the appearance of cars from the two divisions. Under the hood, only a handful of rules keep them from being identical.

As Busch cars slowly morphed into Cup machines, rules limiting Cup testing also placed a premium on information. Cup organization supplement testing by racing in the Busch Series ... and get paid for it. Green calls the practice a "paid Happy Hour."

"As racing has evolved, the Busch Series information will translate so closely to the Cup Series," Keller adds. "You're not only racing against Mark Martin and those guys; you're racing against 10 engineers on top of the pit box. You're racing against the whole team, not just the driver.

"When you walk by Ganassi's war wagon, what do you see? All their Cup engineers. They're gathering as much data as they can. When I started seeing that, that's when I realized that the Busch Series was changing. It's tough to race against all that data."

THE FUTURE

Both Green and Keller see the Car of Tomorrow dramatically decreasing the amount of Cup drivers who participate in the Busch Series.

"I think it's going to be the biggest thing that's happened to the Busch Series since this whole wave of Cup involvement began," Green said. "As long as the Busch Series will have a different car, that will self-discipline the amount of involvement that we have. It's all positive ... all positive."

It might not all be positive. The majority of top-20 non-Cup affiliated owners from just a few years ago are no longer active in the Busch Series. Gone are Baumgardner, Clarence Brewer, Brad Akins, Stan and Bill Herzog, George de Bidart, Ed Evans and Scott Welliver.

So what happens five years from now, when the Car of Tomorrow is fully in place and there's no longer an advantage for Cup teams to race in the Nationwide Series? Good question, says Keller.

"It's a huge concern," Keller continued. "NASCAR can say what they want. There's a lot of positive things in the Busch Series right now. I'm not arguing that fact. ... But I hope you'll have enough owners surface -- enough Clarence Brewers, enough Greg Pollexes -- that can survive and fill that gap. Only time will tell that.

"Right now is not the time that I'm worried about the Busch Series, because Cup guys bring notoriety. I'm not oblivious to that. I'm more worried about when the Cup owners and the Cup drivers don't need the Busch Series. What's gonna happen then? Hopefully, it'll all work out that the No. 2 series in America will be strong enough to survive."