Kyle Busch Still Has To Beat The Paperclip

Kyle Busch won last week at the mini-superspeedway called Bristol. He's now fourth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings. But Martinsville looms over him like Jason from Friday the 13th does over most of his victims.

Kyle Busch in the No. 18 M&M’s Toyota has had three top fives and four top 10s in eight Cup starts there.

NASCAR Loop Data statistics for Martinsville says Busch has an Average Running Position of 14.9, with his best finishes a pair of fourths in 2007.

He finished 38th there last spring and 29th last fall, both due to brake problems. They've done some testing over at Little Rock to "get our brakes squared away" and they believe they ahve fixed the problem.

THat's bad news for the rest of the field.

If he masters this place, and NBaP has no doubt he will, then we be headed for trouble.

Imagine Kyle Busch As Your Best Man?

For some, Kyle Busch is 'Da Man of today. For others, he's 'Da best man for the day!

Check out fans Damon and Heather Landry getting married at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with Kyle Busch looking on as the Best Man... now would that not be cool? Not to mention that awesome wedding picture backdrop!

(Photo Credit: Harry How/Getty Images)

Kyle Busch at Preseason Thunder Fanfest

Press Interview with Kyle Busch at Preseason Thunder:

Being joined by KYLE BUSCH for the NASCAR media group, he answered a few questions posed to him. Let's get right along to it:

On the confidence levels of coming into the Daytona 500: Because they had such a strong restrictor plate program last year, he's coming into this years 500 with a bucket load of confidence.

On Running both the Sprint Cup series and Nationwide, full schedule. He will be running the full Nationwide and the full Cup schedule. At least that's the plan. On top of that they looking at 12 to 14 Camping World Truck Series races and about 10 to 12 late model races of my own team.

On getting over the last 10 races of the year last year. Did it take long to get over it?: "Not really. Pretty much as soon as it was over, it was over. I was glad it was over."

On generating a different outcome than last year: Granted, the first two thirds went really well. Looking back at Loudon, they shouldn't have made the changes on Sunday morning that we did, the change in the length of the sway bar arm and the length that the angle of the dangle didn't fit together, it ended up pulling apart.

They couldn't do anything different about Dover. They never figured out the carburetor problems they had at Kansas and the rest of the season was a little bit good luck and bad luck. They've been working on braking and being able to turn the car at flat tracks with a little testing at New Smyrna, and have a test planned at Rockingham.

Does he have names for the cars that don't perform? They're cut up and thrown away or made into show cars. (Sounds like a vengeful take on his losing cars if you ask me!)

On what, if anything he learned from last season:
"When you lose luck it just changes everything it feels like. The biggest thing that we learned was just for me to work on the bad days. He says he just can't accept running bad, can't accept stuff falling apart and not being able to challenge for a win every week." (Like we didn't notice the fits!)

On what might keep him from running a full Nationwide season:
"Same thing as last year, just right at Milwaukee, Infineon, doing that trip. If you're too far behind in the Nationwide schedule, just skip out on it, forget about it. We've got some leeway in there. There's a couple races that I think J.D. didn't sell that we're just going to put like Gibbs Racing Oil on it or something like that that's our own sponsor, so we've got some room that we can play around with if we want to."

On possibly dealing with fewer wins this year and maturity, what kind of a challenge will it be to deal with less than what you accomplished last year?
He says this will be his biggest challenge and all they can do is work their hardest to continue to perform.

He was asked AGAIN about how he'll be different (Emotionally) this year on the racetrack compared to the past? I found this funny: He was honest and said he didn't know but is hoping that hopefully Tony Stewart with his new team can make it exciting, or Carl Edwards, or anybody else out there that wants to get down and dirty and grind up on each other.

On a possible scenario of running smaller fields while weathering the tough spell:
There is no rule that says there have to be 43 Cup cars, 43 Nationwide cars or 36 trucks but we'd be sacrificing better racing. He says the Truck Series will have 10 trucks that have legitimate chances to win every week. A higher number of cars in the Nationwide Series and the Cup series, even more. With all the folk that are looking for jobs, he thinks that some of the Cup guys available could go to Nationwide teams, helping them get better, mixing up the competition.


Source: NASCAR press relations