Each January, the National Football League opens its playoffs with what is called “Wild Card Weekend” as four teams that did not win their division but still earned playoff berths get the chance to advance toward their ultimate goal, a Super Bowl championship.
For Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 18 M&M’s Halloween Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), and his fellow competitors participating in this year’s version of the “NASCAR Playoffs” – the Chase for the Sprint Cup – this is their version of “Wild Card Weekend.”
Being a Las Vegas native, Busch might know a thing or two about wild cards. But, heading into Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Camping World RV Sales 500 at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, there probably isn’t a track on the circuit that presents as much of an unknown as the mammoth 2.66-mile oval. As he sits in fifth place in the Chase standings, 37 points behind series leader and JGR teammate Matt Kenseth, Busch knows this could be a weekend that could make or break his year, as well as that of his fellow playoff participants.
Busch has conquered Talladega just once in his career, his lone win coming in April 2008. In his 17 starts at the track, he has five other top-15 finishes and four Talladega outings that ended in an accident. So, the Las Vegas native knows the winner of Sunday’s 500-mile race will need to have a strong car and some good fortune in order to survive the seemingly inevitable multicar accident on NASCAR’s longest track.
The bottom line for Busch and the M&M’s Halloween Toyota team, however, continues to be the fact their fate still depends on other drivers – oftentimes not even their JGR teammates – if they are to find success at Talladega this weekend.
If Busch has learned anything at the restrictor-plate tracks, it’s that he must be good to be lucky. He’s comforted in knowing he has exceptional equipment underneath him, thanks to the No. 18 M&M’s Halloween Toyota provided to him by JGR, a “scary” proposition for the M&M’s Fun Size Halloween-themed car when you are in a championship battle with five races left in the Sprint Cup season.
So, as NASCAR prepares for its version of “Wild Card Weekend,” Busch hopes to survive another Talladega race as unscathed as humanly possible, then head to the final four-race stretch of the Chase with a solid shot at bringing home his first Sprint Cup championship.
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