Reaction to N.H. failure put Busch in much deeper hole

You have to lose a championship, or so the old racing adage goes, before you can win one. It's a trite, overused phrase, one that provides a convenient cover-up for failure, and one a handful of great drivers -- like Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt, neither of whom was a serious title threat until their first crowns -- have proven can be debunked. But there is a nugget of truth in there, and it has to do with how a race team or a competitor handles adversity with so much on the line.

Because really, the person who wins the championship at NASCAR's highest level is often the one who best manages misfortune. Think Kurt Busch, keeping his wits about him and steering that three-wheeled car onto pit road at Homestead in 2004. Or Jimmie Johnson, ripping off five consecutive top-two finishes after falling 156 points down after a wreck at Talladega. Or even Tony Stewart, making amends and offering apologies after a 2005 incident that not only could have scuttled his title hopes, but cost him his job. The best drivers realize that adversity is part of the process, and minimizing its effect is often the difference between success and failure.

Which brings us to Kyle Busch, the Sprint Cup points leader for 17 consecutive weeks until one disastrous afternoon last weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Sunday's race on the 1-mile concrete oval at Dover, Del. -- a place that can wreak all kinds of havoc, as evidenced by the frequency of multi-car pileups seen there in recent years -- looms huge for Busch, now 74 points down to Carl Edwards. Sure, he can make that deficit up in one day. But he can also double it, and given that Busch is suddenly in a position where he has to leap past seven other drivers and make things happen, nothing is guaranteed.

But this isn't about Dover, which Busch proved in June that he can win in dominating fashion. This is about New Hampshire, and managing failure, and how Busch has suddenly morphed from a prospective champion into a 23-year-old kid on the brink of proving all his detractors correct.

Granted, there was nothing he could do about the broken heim bolt that turned his Chase opener into such a tailspin. The bottom line is that Busch fell from first to eighth in Sprint Cup points not because of his driving ability, not because of crew chief Steve Addington's car setup, but because of an unforeseen failure of a $20 part. But Busch didn't exactly help himself in the way he handled the situation. In his eagerness to get back to pit road he passed cars on the apron under yellow, a "pulling up to pit" violation that led NASCAR officials, per the rulebook, to slap him with a one-lap penalty. (Continued)