Lack of Cup title doesn't diminish Busch's season

He bounded into the interview room the picture of enthusiasm, a wide and supremely confident smile etched upon his face. While Kyle Busch was taking nothing for granted -- no racecar driver does -- he was clearly pleased with himself, and with good reason. He had just won at Watkins Glen International to score his eighth Sprint Cup victory in a season that was barely half over. He had made a clean sweep of the year's road courses. He was riding the wave, bolstered by a huge lead in championship points, asserting himself more and more as the clear favorite for the title. No one had any inkling that it would come to an end so soon.

That August afternoon in New York was the last time Busch won a race in NASCAR's premier series. Five weeks later, thanks to the Chase format and the first of what would become a spate of mechanical difficulties, his points lead would be gone. Now, with two just two races remaining and Jimmie Johnson trying to hold off Carl Edwards for the championship, the driver who dominated the first two-thirds of the season is 10th in points and a complete afterthought. Long gone are those pre-Chase days when the title was considered a three-man race.

"It's a shame for that race team and for Kyle," said Denny Hamlin, Busch's teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing. "They're going to be struggling to make it to New York. After the season that they've had, they deserve something, I truly believe that. I don't know if you have a regular-season champion or what have you. I definitely think they deserve to have something for all the effort and all the wins they've had this year."

But there won't be a trophy, maybe not even a seat at the postseason awards banquet in New York City -- only the top 10 go, and right now Busch is right on the number, just three points out of 12th. Yet even with all that, when the 2008 campaign is over, only two Sprint Cup competitors should merit serious consideration for any driver of the year awards. One is whomever wins the series title. And the other is Kyle Busch.

No, he's not going to win the championship -- on the Sprint Cup circuit, or on any other NASCAR circuit, for that matter. His Chase fortunes, which have included a broken suspension joint, a failed engine part and an engine pressure issue, have been nothing short of disastrous. Even he surely considers this year one glorious opportunity that frustratingly got away. But make no mistake about it -- Busch's season, when viewed in its totality, has been nothing short of spectacular. And the lack of a Sprint Cup title does nothing to diminish that.

In all honestly, everyone has become a little too caught up in this all-or-nothing championship quest, the product of a Chase format that turns the title into something of a free-for-all, and expectations that make anything from second place on down look like a failure. Jeff Gordon had one of the best seasons in modern NASCAR history last year, with an amazing 30 top-10 finishes, but it all seemed for naught because Johnson's unconscious finishing kick whisked away the crown. We could all learn a little something from baseball's Tampa Bay Rays or college basketball's Davidson Wildcats, both of whom proved that a large degree of victory can be achieved even in defeat. Hardcore types like to mock drivers who occasionally find satisfaction in finishing second. Well, maybe that's because sometimes finishing second is quite an accomplishment.

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.