One look at Kyle Busch’s ever-growing trophy case at his Kyle Busch Motorsports race shop reveals an assortment of impressive hardware for his now 130 overall wins in NASCAR’s top three levels of competition. The latest addition for his 29th career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series win came after his exciting last-lap pass Sunday at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif.
One entire display in Busch’s race shop features 16 trophies just from the Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway high-banked, half-mile oval, where the Las Vegas native has been dominant in all three of NASCAR’s top series.
But even though Busch, driver of the No. 18 M&M’s Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR), has more trophies than he probably knows what to do with, there’s one glaring omission from another famous half-mile short track – the traditional, 7-foot-tall clock that Martinsville (Va.) Speedway president Clay Campbell’s late grandfather and track founder H. Clay Earles began awarding Martinsville race winners more than five decades ago.
Needless to say, Busch has his sights set on getting that long-awaited maiden victory at Martinsville, the site of Sunday’s STP 500 Sprint Cup race.
Of the 23 venues that will host Sprint Cup events in 2014, Busch has won at least once at 20 of those venues in at least one of NASCAR’s top three divisions – Sprint Cup, Nationwide, and Camping World Truck. There are only three current Sprint Cup tracks – Martinsville, Pocono (Pa.) Raceway, and Indianapolis Motor Speedway – where Busch has not scored a victory in any of NASCAR’s top three series.
Despite the lack of a Martinsville grandfather clock, Busch has plenty of reasons for optimism this weekend, considering how he has been able to pick up his game at the .526-mile paperclip-shaped oval since he was paired with crew chief Dave Rogers.
During a three-race stretch starting when he joined JGR in the spring of 2008, Busch never finished better than 24th at Martinsville. But his fortunes there began to turn around with a solid fourth-place finish in the fall of 2009.
Enter crew chief Rogers in March 2010. During his first full season under Rogers’ guidance, Busch started a strong string of races at Martinsville with a fourth-place run in October 2010.
In his next trip to the tricky Virginia short track in March 2011, Busch led a race-high 151 laps before scoring his career-best Martinsville finish of third. And, in October 2011, he led another race-high 126 laps before being collected in an accident not of his own doing late in the race. It continued with another career-best Martinsville finish of third in October 2012, followed by a fifth-place run in October 2013.
Indeed, Busch feels like the M&M’s team keeps getting closer and closer to that elusive win at Martinsville with each return. Despite a blank in the win column, Busch’s solid career totals show eight top-five finishes and nine top-10s in his 18 Sprint Cup starts there with five of those top-five finishes coming over the last nine races there.
Busch will hope to ride the wave of momentum generated by his first victory of the season last weekend at Fontana. It qualified him for the Chase for the Sprint Cup as long as he stays within the top-30 in the standings and starts every race between now and the Chase cutoff following race 26 at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway. At Fontana, Busch led just five laps but brought home the checkered flag in dramatic fashion as he slid by Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch, then held off hard-charging rookie Kyle Larson, all on the last lap, to capture the win.
He’ll hope that momentum continues as he aims for his first Martinsville grandfather clock after knocking on the door during several recent visits to the Southern Virginia short track.
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