Busch admits an attitude change may help his team

INDIANAPOLIS -- Feeding the homeless, exchanging pleasantries in the garage, admitting his faults ... what has gotten into Kyle Busch?

Nothing. He's just choosing to show a side of himself rarely seen by NASCAR fans or media types after a much-needed self-realization.

Sound Off

Kyle Busch reflects on his poor Chicago performance, improvements he and the No. 18 team need to make and Denny Hamlin's leadership.

• More

The maturation process of young Busch, though seemingly at a glacial pace, is underway because the Joe Gibbs Racing driver knows he must improve his attitude in order to become the championship-caliber competitor he has the potential to be.

Preparing for Sunday's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, Busch confessed on Friday that he needs to be a better team player.

"I need to become a better person in being able to pull our team together and lead these guys and, ultimately, lead them back into the Chase," Busch said.

The realization comes after a miserable week at Chicagoland Speedway where the No. 18 team posted one of its worst finishes (33rd) of the season. Busch, who described the week as his "worst ever," was irate over the radio and called his car "junk."

"A lot of that could have been my fault, just not communicating with the team in the way that we needed to in order to get our car better throughout that race," Busch said. "That was a bad week. Hopefully we can get back to some good ways here."

Busch said his pledge to improve his approach and attitude is part self-realization and part help from his friends, publicist Bill Janitz and spotter Jeff Dickerson

"It's been a frustrating season and other drivers would look at it and love to have this season," said Busch, who last season had eight Sprint Cup Series wins, 10 Nationwide Series wins and three victories in the Camping World Truck Series. "When you look at last year, this isn't our style, this isn't anything that we would like to have, struggling to get ourselves into the top 12 and make the Chase. We want to be up front where Jimmie [Johnson] is and Tony [Stewart] is, Jeff [Gordon], Kurt [Busch] and all those guys. That's where we want to be."

But at the end of the day, for Busch, it's still about being competitive.

You may hear him aspire to improve his approach, and yes he volunteered his time to Gleaner's Food Bank in Indianapolis this week. But you won't see him lessen his zeal or aggressive driving style on the track.

"We want to be solidly in and running competitively, but ultimately it comes down to competition on the track and that's where my focus is," Busch said. "I'm always focused on trying to make something better."

Busch, sitting 10th in the point standings with three Cup wins but only two top-10 finishes in his last nine starts, knows he needs to keep his emotions in better check and recover from adversity -- turn what may be a poor finish into a top-15.

"Sometimes I wear it on my sleeve too much and I need to shake it off and just figure that it's not going to be me that fixes the car," he said. "All I can do is help give feedback and information and tell them what [the car] is doing."

After a stellar 2008 season, being the driver that everyone was initially chasing, Busch is now experiencing some growing pains.

"I don't like to be chasing," he said. "I like to be the guy leading, so it's hard. But sometimes you have to look back at the big picture and realize that you can do a lot more to help and rally the team than really hurting it and dragging it down."

Turning a bad day on the track into a respectable finish the team can be happy with is something Busch intends to work on.

"When our bad weeks are bad, they're real bad," said Busch, who has slipped in the fight for a Cup championship. "If you're having a bad day then you need to make a 10th out of it and we're not very good at that. I'm not very good at that and I don't think our team is very good at that. Maybe that's because of me. Maybe I'm not leading it in the right direction. I've got some things that I've got to try to work on to make ourselves better and ultimately more championship-caliber."

Rome wasn't built in a day. Don't expect to see a drastic change in Busch overnight, but do expect him to work on things. A step in the right direction might be reading his boss's new book, Game plan for life: Your personal playbook for success.

"I've heard about it," Busch said. "I don't know anything as to what it's about. Apparently it's a game plan of life so maybe that's what I need."