Busch runs well at Bristol, now he has momentum

Kyle Busch's amazing adventure through NASCAR can reach another milestone Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway.

If Busch, 22, wins the Sharpie Mini 300 Nationwide race, he will have victories in each of NASCAR's top three series for the fourth consecutive year. Two other drivers have accomplished the feat but just once each -- Kevin Harvick in 2003 and Terry Labonte in 1995.

Fast Facts

What	Sharpie Mini 300
When	2 p.m. ET Saturday
TV	ESPN2
Radio	PRN / Sirius Ch. 128

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"Bristol Motor Speedway is one of my favorite tracks," said Busch, who won the Sprint Cup and Craftsman Truck races last weekend in Atlanta. "It seems like Bristol is one of those tracks you either love or hate, and fortunately for me, I've had some success here, so I'm one of the drivers that love it."

Busch has finished in the top 10 in six of his seven Nationwide appearances at Bristol including a win in 2006. He's also the defending Sprint Cup event winner this weekend. Busch enters Saturday's race with the top driver rating at the track (110.9) and first in average running position (10.1) for races dating back to 2005.

Busch will drive the No. 32 Braun Racing Toyota at Bristol, the same car he drove to a runner-up finish last month in California.

"We won the first COT race here last year and won a Nationwide Series race the year before that," Busch said. "The repaving they did last year really made for more side-by-side racing and made it a little easier to get by the lap cars. With any short track you struggle with the lap traffic getting in the way, but now that there is an additional racing groove, it's easier to get by.

"I've had some good runs in the Nationwide Series races so far this year, and we've been close to victory but haven't quite got there yet. I'm hoping this weekend we can get this monkey off our back."

Busch is third in the points standings, behind leader Kevin Harvick and defending Sharpie Mini 300 winner Carl Edwards. Harvick is tied with Morgan Shepherd for most Nationwide wins on the .533-mile track with four, and his driver rating is 106.9, second to Busch. Edwards is next at 103.1.

Two-time series champion Martin Truex Jr. will be making his second Nationwide start of the season, his first in the No. 5 JR Motorsports Chevrolet. He has one win at Bristol, which he scored in 2004 while driving for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s co-owned Chance 2 Motorsports team.

"I'm really excited about driving Junior's Nationwide car at Bristol," Truex said. "We were talking on the Internet at the beginning of the year, and he said he was looking for someone to drive his car in a couple of Nationwide races. I told him I'd do it, and he said, 'Are you kidding?' I told him I was being serious, but we didn't talk about it again for a while, and I had kind of forgotten about it. He brought it up again a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I was still interested, and I told him I was. It's going to be a lot of fun." (Continued)