Don't do it, Kyle.

Oh, you know he wants to. The man is a racer, after all, tried and true. Most people with his net worth spend their vacations on some remote atoll surrounded by only aquamarine waters and servers bearing drinks. Him? He spends his leisure time in some dusty Midwestern outpost racing loud, slant-nosed creatures that look like props from a "Terminator" movie. If it has a wheel, and a throttle, and it goes fast, he's itching to kick somebody's behind in it. Had he been born a century earlier and been a pilot, he would have tried to beat Lindbergh across the Atlantic.

“

I want to be one of the best. I want to be known as the best.

”

-- KYLE BUSCH

So yes, you know Kyle Busch wants to run the full Nationwide Series and challenge for another championship, an idea that came wafting across the prairie after his rain-postponed victory Monday evening at Texas Motor Speedway, as tantalizing as the smell of char-grilled red meat. And who can blame him, really? Busch now owns a 20-point lead over Brad Keselowski in the series standings, and says he has as much fun in the Nationwide car as he does anywhere else. He has 33 career victories on NASCAR's No. 2 circuit, is closing in on Kevin Harvick's second-place mark of 36, and is well aware of where he stands relative to Mark Martin's record of 48.

"I want to be one of the best," Busch said after his Texas victory. "I want to be known as the best."

And one day, perhaps, he will -- but does he need to run the full Nationwide slate in 2010 to get there? It's easy now, in the glow of a fifth consecutive Nationwide victory at Texas and a promising start to his Sprint Cup season, to forget why Joe Gibbs Racing scaled Busch back to around 25 companion events to begin with. Last season's Nationwide title, Busch's first in a NASCAR national division, coincided with a summertime slide that left the driver eight points on the wrong side of the Chase cutoff. While there was no obvious cause-and-effect relationship between the two events, there were enough shortened or skipped debriefing sessions and enough late-night flights between enough race venues to give the impression that Busch was overextended by juggling both series at the same time.

In the end, at least on the Sprint Cup side, there weren't enough results like those we had become accustomed to seeing from Busch, who emerged as the most polarizing figure in NASCAR by winning eight times -- sometimes in brash, unrepentant style -- the year before. The closer he crept toward that 2009 Nationwide title, the more uneven his Sprint Cup performances became, to the point where even older brother Kurt wondered if he was taking on too much. Granted, the No. 18 team tried some setups last year that just didn't work, and former crew chief Steve Addington wound up as the fall guy. But no one paid a steeper price than Busch, as fiery and dynamic a competitor as there is in the Sprint Cup garage area, who over the final third of last season was reduced to the galling position of also-ran. (Continued)