Kyle Busch Feeling at Home in the Desert

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In: NASCAR Cup Series News

There’s just no place like home for Las Vegas native Kyle Busch. But, there is a close second.

While Busch, driver of the No. 18 M&M’s Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), relishes each chance to visit his desert hometown, there’s yet another desert destination that ranks as next-best for Busch.

Where might that be? Of course, it’s Phoenix International Raceway, site of Sunday’s penultimate stop on the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series campaign, the Advocare 500k.

Located just 300 miles to the south and east of his hometown of Las Vegas, the likewise desert setting of Phoenix has been a favorite place to wheel a racecar long before Busch joined the Sprint Cup ranks. And the results have certainly shown, starting with a solid eighth-place finish in his very first outing there in the spring of 2005, followed by just his second career Sprint Cup victory in his very next start there in the fall race that year. Coincidentally enough, his first Sprint Cup win came just 10 races prior in another desert-like setting – Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif.

In 17 Sprint Cup starts at the mile oval known as the “Diamond in the Desert,” Busch has one win and nine top-10 finishes, including four in a row from the spring 2007 through fall 2008 events, and he won the pole for the spring 2006 race. Busch also was in position to win both Sprint Cup races at Phoenix in 2010, as well as the February 2011 race, and both races there in 2012, but things never fell his way.

Add five victories, eight top-five finishes, 11 top-10s and five poles in Busch’s 15 NASCAR Nationwide Series starts, and a pair of NASCAR Camping World Truck Series wins in the fall 2007 and spring 2011 events, and it’s no wonder Busch relishes every opportunity to compete at his desert home away from home. With numbers like that, who wouldn’t?

Busch currently sits fourth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup standings. While the top-two contenders – points-leader Jimmie Johnson and Busch’s JGR teammate Matt Kenseth – have separated themselves from the rest of the pack, the M&M’s team will be working as hard as possible to overtake third-place Kevin Harvick, who is 12 points ahead of Busch, and be ready in case any of the top two slip up. Busch’s best career points finish was fifth in 2007, so he knows he’s a in solid position to better that when the checkered flag flies to end the season two Sundays from now at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Thus, with just two races remaining on the Sprint Cup calendar for 2013, Busch sees Sunday’s 500-kilometer run at his home away from home as his first of two chances to finish off the season in victory lane and, more importantly, tally his best final points finish in his Sprint Cup career.

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