Can Kurt Busch finally steal some of his younger brother’s thunder?
For nearly two years, Kurt has toiled rather unsuccessfully in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series while Kyle has racked up victories, stirred controversy and bulldozed his way into the series’ top echelon of drivers.
But even as Kyle made more headlines with a historic Saturday in Fontana, Calif., winning NASCAR’s Nationwide and truck series races on the same day, Kurt on Sunday quietly showed the form that earned him the Cup championship five years ago.
Kurt, 30, finished fifth in the Auto Club 500 in his Penske Racing Dodge a week after opening the season with a 10th-place finish in the Daytona 500.
That lifted the older Busch brother to third place in the Cup standings behind point leader Matt Kenseth, who won both races, and Jeff Gordon, who finished second to Kenseth in Sunday’s race at Auto Club Speedway.
“We’re happy, a top-five finish is good,” Kurt said after the race. “It’s only one race, a long way to go,” he said, but added that his team had “an excellent turnaround over the off-season.”
Kyle, meanwhile, finished third to Kenseth and Gordon on Sunday, but he’s 18th in points after finishing 41st at Daytona when he was collected in a multicar crash.
Now, both are looking forward to the next Cup race at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway this Sunday because they’re Las Vegas natives, although they haven’t won at their home track.
Before Kyle, 23, reeled off eight wins in 2008 and earned nicknames such as “Rowdy” with his aggressive, cocky manner, Kurt was the primary NASCAR figure named Busch.
Kurt, then driving for team owner Jack Roush, won the title in 2004 — the first year that NASCAR used the Chase for the Cup playoff system — by a mere eight points over Jimmie Johnson.
Kurt moved to Roger Penske’s team in 2006, taking over the No. 2 car that had been driven by former champion Rusty Wallace, and started by winning the spring race in Bristol, Tenn. But Busch then sagged and finished 16th in points, missing that year’s Chase.
He bounced back in 2007 with two wins and made the Chase but finished seventh in the standings. Busch slumped again last year, winning only one race (in New Hampshire) and again missing the 12-driver Chase.
“Hands down, we struggled with the new car,” Busch said last month in reference to NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow, the newly designed chassis that had its first full season in the Cup series in 2008.
Busch said that too often last year he had a car capable of finishing 12th or 15th but, in a bid to place higher, he would drive the car too hard or his team would make strategic calls that backfired, and “we just came away with far too many finishes of like 35th or worse.”
In Fontana last week, Busch was asked about his mind-set last year.
“We didn’t do our job (last year) like we needed to,” he replied. “Does it bother me? No. I’ve been on top of this sport. I’ve been in the basement.”
Then he added: “You have to be competitive every week if you’re going to be talked to or talked about.”
Just ask Kyle Busch.
The late Frank Kurtis of Glendale, Calif.,an innovative designer of race cars that included five Indianapolis 500 winners in the 1950s, was chosen for the annual Justice Brothers-Shav Glick Award. The award, given to those making distinguished contributions to auto racing, is named after the late motor racing writer for the Los Angeles Times.
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