Emptying out the notebook after an exciting weekend (cont'd)

In-house brawling?

With Kyle Busch's recent record, it makes you wonder, even in this challenged economy, how much success Joe Gibbs Racing will continue to have and how they'll succeed in doling out races and keeping those sponsors happy.

In no particular order, in the last two seasons Busch has delivered the first victories for Toyota in the Cup Series, sponsors Snickers and Combos in the same division; and for Z-line and NOS Energy Drink in the Nationwide Series. Could be forgetting a previous trip to Victory Lane, so cut me a break, but the bottom line is, as Busch's fan reaction gets more and more positive, the pressure to spread him around can only grow.

“

I've got to tell you, what I hear is more and more cheers. I think generally fans appreciate great effort.

”

-- JOE GIBBS

Saturday night, when Busch took the race lead from Jeff Gordon, all that could be heard from the crowd, wearing a good set of headphones, were cheers -- loud ones.

Don't care what Shrub has said before about not caring about his image. He's always cared about his fans and it's nice to see some of that reflecting back on him.

"Pretty cool," Busch admitted. "They enjoy racing here at Richmond. I'm not sure how many passes there were for the lead out there [but] to make ours stick on the outside like that for the win, you know, really meant a lot [and] the fans enjoyed it. They saw a great race here, I felt like."

Team owner Joe Gibbs, obviously, has a lot of bias; but his assessment was pretty spot-on.

"I've got to tell you, what I hear is more and more cheers," Gibbs said. "I think generally fans appreciate great effort. I think they appreciate somebody that's really, really good at something. I think that's what's coming across with Kyle. I think he's special as a driver."

I'd second that motion.

Another fan favorite

Carl Edwards still has a ways to go before he gains on Dale Earnhardt Jr. as racing's "Pigpen," that is, carrying a mass of people clamoring for autographs, a word or a touch, with him wherever he goes so that from a distance they look like a dust cloud surrounding the man within.

Edwards had to move from the Nationwide garage after final practice to get to his Cup car and a miniature mob surrounded him. But as he usually does -- and certainly as Earnhardt does, as best as he's able -- Edwards apologized for having to keep moving, but signed as much as he could.

Wins: Thru Richmond

	2008	2009
Cup Series	2	3
Nationwide	3	3
Truck Series	2	2

Despite Busch's stunning 2008 NASCAR record for victories in a season, nothing he's done so far this season makes this writer think Busch in 2009 won't eclipse his total of 21 wins (8 Cup, 10 Nationwide, 3 Truck). Richmond got him back on track, in fact, ahead of the curve as he scored his second weekend sweep in the last two seasons; so it's 8 down (3 Cup, 3 Nationwide, 2 Truck), 14 to go.

His 2008 win total at this point was 7: 2 Cup, 3 Nationwide, 2 Truck, so as Busch himself said with a laugh after leaving Victory Lane at Richmond for the first time in a year and a half, "it's felt like forever [since winning]. We've gone four or five weeks in a row of 17th or worse in the Cup Series and it's just frustrating. We've had runs that have been better than that; we've just taken ourselves out of the running toward the end of the race."

And with Busch going to Darlington, where he's the defending Southern 500 champion, look out.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.