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.

What followed wasn't an apology, but an avalanche of F-bombs that had even the ever-chilled-out Addington asking Busch to calm down. This, on a day when Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s struggles made it quite evident that panic over the radio does nothing to help a race team. And please, no excuses about how such transmissions are supposed to be private. Thousands of scanners are rented at racetracks every weekend, and radio chatter is aired on everything from television stations to this Internet site to certain types of Sprint phones. People are always listening, a fact that drivers and teams are going to have to realize eventually.

How different might last Sunday have been had Busch calmly managed his trouble, rather than simply reacted so vehemently to it? No question these are high-speed, high-stress situations, and certain degrees of alarm and anger are expected. These aren't automatons driving these cars, after all. But if Busch keeps his head, doesn't spend so much time screaming over the radio, doesn't commit the pit-road penalty, and doesn't lose that initial lap -- who knows what happens. At the very least, his deficit is less than it is. That's a lot to ask, of course. But don't we hear every week that these are the 43 best drivers in the world? And isn't one hallmark of a great athlete the ability to appear calm amid the chaos?

Kyle Busch is so talented it's scary. The kid has the innate driving ability to win race after race and championship after championship. But he can't compound problems through his reaction to them, which on Sunday only made a bad situation worse. This isn't about him blowing off the media; while the regular-season points leader skipping out on reporters certainly doesn't look good, in NASCAR only the top three finishers are obliged to talk to the press. Yet the entire episode led to questions about Busch's maturity, something that's not supposed to be an issue anymore. And it all provided plenty of ammunition to the haters out there, fans who see him as too petulant, too arrogant, and not mentally tough enough to win a title.

Busch has it in his power to provide definitive answers, to show that he can weather storms not only over 26 races, but over the final 10 as well. Anyone who think's he is out of this is kidding themselves. But the next time there's a crisis -- and in this sport, there will always be another crisis -- he needs to get out of his own way. There's no question that Busch has the ability and the team to get back in this Chase. But there's also no question that another episode like Sunday's could force him to endure losing a championship before he wins one, thus proving that old racing adage to be true after all.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.