Lack of Cup title doesn't diminish Busch's season (cont'd)

Busch's victory in the Nationwide Series race last weekend at Texas Motor Speedway was his 21st this season on a NASCAR national touring circuit. He's won 10 times on the Nationwide Series alone, tying the record set by former series champion Sam Ard. He's won three Craftsman Truck races. He's won a series-best eight times on the Sprint Cup circuit, a mark tied last weekend by Edwards, and a number that might have been higher had all the steam not been taken out of his season by mechanical misfortune. But it goes beyond those victory totals, to the three road course wins (including the Nationwide event in Mexico City), to the way he came from the back to the front to win at Darlington, to the way he stormed past Edwards to win at Daytona, to the way he hunted down Johnson in a two-lap shootout at Chicagoland. He won in often impressive, sometimes spectacular fashion on an array of technical or unforgiving tracks. It's impossible to dismiss any of that.

Kyle Busch

2008 Statistics

	Cup	N'wide	Truck
Wins	8	10	3
Top-5	17	16	8
Top-10	20	18	14
Poles	2	4	1
Rank	10	7	15

"I still think it's a pretty successful year in my opinion," said Tony Stewart, also Busch's teammate on the Gibbs team. "To go out and win [21] races in any season, no matter what type of car it is, that's pretty impressive. Obviously, he's not going to be satisfied because he's so competitive, and it doesn't mean that I'm not that competitive. But when you put it in perspective, and you look how many races you run, to win [21] races out of a season is pretty impressive."

Clint Bowyer agreed. "He has had a hell of a ride. He has done a good job," the Richard Childress Racing driver said. "Things just didn't go as planned in the Chase. That is what this Chase is all about. It is a fresh start. You have to be on your game when the money is on the line. Unfortunately, they slipped up a little bit when it counted. He has had a stellar season. He can't shy away from [21] wins. Been a long time since somebody has won [21] races, if they ever have. That is a heck of a year, something he can be proud of and have a good winter knowing that. He probably had a lot of fun and he has made a bunch of money."

Not that any of that makes up for what's already been lost, especially in the mind of a young, all-out driver who rightfully considered himself the man to beat coming out of the regular-season finale in Richmond. "I figured that we were pretty much going to be championship contenders," he said at Texas. Maybe after the checkered flag falls at Homestead-Miami Speedway in two weeks, Busch will be able to reflect on all he's accomplished in this 2008 season, view it outside the context of the Sprint Cup championship picture, and perhaps take a certain degree of satisfaction in it all. If only everyone else could do the same.

"Even though he's probably had one of the best years overall in history, not winning the title, I'm sure, will be a big disappointment for him with all the wins he had early in the year and how strong they looked," Roush Fenway driver Matt Kenseth said. "It looked like they were going to be impossible to beat, but it's a really what-have-you-done-for-me-lately type sport. He won all those races and everybody was talking about him all year, and now all of a sudden you haven't heard much about him the last few weeks. That's just how quickly it changes."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.