WAKE FOREST, North Carolina — With the 2008 NASCAR season finally over, drivers have headed home or set off on well-earned vacations. None of them has traveled farther than Marcos Ambrose.

Ambrose flew straight from the final weekend of racing in Florida to his Australian homeland where the first place he visited was, you guessed it, a racetrack.

Ambrose, a two-time Australian V8 Supercar champion, spent last weekend watching the V8 Supercars race at his home circuit, Symmons Plains Raceway, just outside Launceston, Tasmania.

And, of course, everyone wanted to know about NASCAR.

“I feel like I had my butt handed to me this year in the U.S.,” Ambrose told the local media. “I finally got in some competitive equipment, got into that Cup racing game and realized that if I’m going to contend, I’ve really got to go to another level.”

In his third season racing in America, Ambrose drove full-time in the second-tier Nationwide Series, winning his first race at Watkins Glen and finishing 10th in the points. He also ran in 11 Sprint Cup races, taking a season-best third at Watkins Glen, with 18th place in Phoenix his best finish on an oval.

Next season, Ambrose will run the full Sprint Cup schedule in the No. 47 Toyota for JTG Daugherty Racing, which has entered into a technical alliance with Michael Waltrip Racing with four primary sponsors.

“The 11 races I’ve done at the Cup level have been an eye-opener for me,” Ambrose said. “I’ve realized that to last five hours out there is not an easy thing. The races are long, they’re aggressive. The drivers are as good and competitive as I’ve seen anywhere and the depth of talent is amazing.

“I’m looking forward to that challenge. Everything is poised to be something special. All I’ve asked of myself and the people that have worked with me over there is to give me the opportunity to prove or disprove whether I’ve got it and whether I can do it.”

For now, Ambrose is just happy to have a little time off.

“Yeah, I really need a break now,” he said. “It’s been a long year. Someone said to me earlier that I’ve basically done three seasons of V8 Supercars in 10 months. And that’s really what it feels like.

“I feel tired, I feel worn out, I feel like I’ve had enough for a while. The double race formats have been difficult for me, the travel between the tracks. … I call it the two-tenths rule. I’m two-tenths of a second a lap away from flying my own jet and, unfortunately, I’m flying around commercial, doing it the hard way.

“Hopefully, this break can give me the chance to really refocus and have a good think about what I need to do to be successful and be better.”

It wasn’t the most successful season for former Cup champion Kurt Busch, but at least he kept alive his string of seasons with at least one victory.

Busch stretched that string to seven seasons when he won the rain-shortened race at New Hampshire in June.

“That’s something that I am really proud of, to have been to Victory Lane at least once during each and every season that I’ve been a full-time (Cup) driver,” Busch said. “When you look at great racers like Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick, who were not able to continue their winning streaks this season, it certainly magnifies the value of what we’ve been able to do through the years.”

Only two-time champion Tony Stewart, who has won at least once in 10 straight seasons, is ahead of Busch in that category. He is tied with three-time reigning Cup champion Jimmie Johnson for second.

After Busch moved to Penske Racing in 2006 to replace retiring NASCAR star Rusty Wallace, he won the March race at Bristol in only his fifth start for the team. His victories over the last three seasons have helped boost Penske Racing’s continuous winning streak to 18 years, trailing only Hendrick Motorsports’ 23 straight years with at least one win.

“It’s longer than Roush Racing’s (12 years), longer than Joe Gibbs’ Racing’s (16 years) and longer than Richard Childress Racing’s (four years),” Busch said. “Even through the difficult seasons like we had this year, we’ve still been able to win races. That fact is certainly something that our team takes great pride in.”

Nobody can call 74-year-old James Hylton a quitter.

After failing to make the field for the Daytona 500 in his 2007 comeback effort, Hylton will try again in February, teaming up with car owner John Carter in an effort to make the 51st annual Daytona 500.

“Christmas has come early for me,” Hylton said. “I’m thrilled to be able to fulfill the promise I made to the fans in 2007 of returning for one more Daytona 500.”

Hylton, celebrating his 50th year in NASCAR, competed full-time in the ARCA RE/MAX Series in 2008.

“Our goal is to run a complete 2009 series with James Hylton driving the EM Motorsports Dodge,” said Carter, who noted the team is still looking for sponsorship. “You don’t know how proud we are of being part of history by putting James Hylton in our car.”

Hylton, who began his NASCAR career as a mechanic in 1959, began his driving career in 1964. He has two wins, 140 top-fives, four poles and finished second in the points three times.

While Jimmie Johnson won his third straight Cup title under the Chase for the championship format, he would own only one ring under the points system that was used before the 2004 season.

Johnson officially beat Carl Edwards by 69 points in the 10-race Chase in 2008. But, under the old system, which includes the entire 36-race season, Edwards would have been the winner by 16 points.

A year ago, instead of beating Jeff Gordon by 77 points, Gordon, who dominated the 26-race regular season, would have won under the old system by a whopping 353 points.

In 2006, Johnson beat Matt Kenseth by 56 in the Chase. He would have won under the old system too — by 4 points.