No title would mean a lost season for Busch, 18 team

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- Even before the 2008 season ended, Kyle Busch already was making plans for the 2009 Nationwide Series campaign. Despite missing five of the 35 races that year, he still wound up sixth in the final standings, which got him and owners J.D. and Joe Gibbs to thinking last fall.

"It was probably October of last year or something like that, Charlotte time, where I just told Joe and J.D.," Busch said. "I said, we made a mistake on not going after it this year and completing the deal and running all the races. Mathematically I could have won by 19 points last year, but that's last year, it doesn't matter. I told all these guys we need to go for it, our cars are capable of doing it and we got the sponsorship and funding."

Expanding lead

Kyle Busch put his lead out of reach by taking advantage of a Lap 3 crash by Carl Edwards at Michigan.

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J.D. Gibbs' biggest concern wasn't whether Busch could run up front. He wanted to make sure Busch wouldn't wear down driving more than 80 races in Cup, Nationwide and the Truck Series throughout the course of the 10-month season.

With a total of 20 wins, including nine of the Nationwide variety, perhaps Gibbs needn't have worried. Busch added 11 second-place runs and his total of 5,682 points was the most for any driver in a single Nationwide season.

"Yeah, obviously the hard thing is when you run both series full time, that's difficult," Gibbs said. "It wears on you. The thing about Kyle, though, is if he's not running something, he's difficult. The more you can keep him in stuff and keep him going, especially while he's young ...

"There's probably a few times this year where doing both of them was difficult and he might have suffered one side or the other a little bit. That's true."

While Busch felt like he missed out on winning the championship by a narrow margin in 2008, crew chief Jason Ratcliff still was smarting from losing the 2003 title by 14 points when he worked with David Green at Brewco Motorsports.

"When we first came to Joe Gibbs Racing, J.D. and I talked, and I told him one of the biggest goals that I had was winning a championship in the Nationwide Series," Ratcliff said. "And it looked like we were going to get to pursue that, and then it kind of fell to the wayside because of different things, we were bringing up different drivers which were great opportunities.

"So when Kyle came along and he wanted to run for a championship, and our car was at the time the car to do it, thankfully, I thought, 'All right, here we go, here's another shot at it.'"

And even though the team knew it had clinched the title just by taking the green flag, Busch wanted to win it on the track with a victory in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, becoming the first series champ to win the final race of the year since Sam Ard did it in 1983.

"A lot of drivers come down here with the championship locked up, take the pressure off themselves, ride around, whatever, collect a check," Busch said. "But that's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to collect trophies.

"Jason and myself, we set out to try to win this race and to be greedy, to be selfish, to be the only ones celebrating [Saturday night] on the frontstretch, and we achieved that goal. It's special. It brings a smile to my face just knowing that we were the best of the best this year, and we showed it again [Saturday night] being able to put the icing on the cake and just finish the deal and be able to beat our archrival and our biggest competition, Carl Edwards, there late with him getting tires and everything and us just keeping our track position and staying up there."

And even though the champagne stains hadn't dried, Ratcliff already was looking forward to 2010.

"These guys on this team, man, I just can't say enough about the effort they put in, and I can't think of any team that deserves it more than these guys do," Ratcliff said. "It's fun. I wish we could go out and do it again next year."

So what say you, J.D. Gibbs? Is a repeat performance in the cards?

"I look forward to the fact that we won this year, do what you have to do, next year now you're not running for the championship on the driver's side, just have fun with it," Gibbs said. "So I think that hopefully will be a benefit to the Cup side and the Nationwide side. But it is difficult running both, but for Kyle he's got the strength and the energy to do it."