On the final weekend of the 2008 NASCAR season, Busch went 0-for-3 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, dominating at times in both the Craftsman Truck and Nationwide races before fading at the finish of each, then losing a top-five finish in the Sprint Cup finale when he had to pit for gas with two laps remaining.
For a guy who won a record 21 races in 2008 -- eight in Cup, 10 in Nationwide and three in trucks -- the final three days of racing were definitely anticlimactic.
And the last 10 weeks of the Cup season were particularly frustrating for Busch, who started the Chase for the championship leading the points after a sensational 26-race "regular season."
He was out of contention just three weeks into the Chase, the victim of a broken swaybar at New Hampshire (34th), an engine failure at Dover (43rd) and another engine problem at Kansas (28th).
"I guess we just used up all of our good luck earlier in the season," Busch said. "The team never gave up. We had some good races. We just got too far behind and couldn't make it up."
His late-season problems probably made many of his detractors happy. But the sometime "Bad Boy" of Cup, a driver many fans love to hate, wasn't discouraged.
He wound up salvaging a 10th-place finish in the season standings with top-10s in four of the last six races. That was enough to earn Busch a trip to New York next week for the NASCAR awards dinner -- not that he was all that thrilled about having to spend time in the big city.
"It's an honor, I guess, but it's just a lot of work," Busch said. "It does show we had a pretty good year, though.
"I'm happy for my team and the organization. At this point, we're all thinking about next year and how good we can be. It'll be good to get a fresh start."
After moving from Hendrick Motorsports, where he won a total of four races in the three previous years, Busch was an almost instant success at Joe Gibbs Racing, outshining veteran teammates Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin, each of whom won just once in Cup in 2008. And Busch was unquestionably the best driver for Toyota, in its second year of Cup racing.
His first win of the season -- and Toyota's first in Cup -- came at Atlanta in only the fourth race of the season. The wins came in bunches after that.
Toyota Racing Development president Lee White says Busch is the driver who made this a special year for the company.
"Frankly, if you take Kyle Busch out of the equation, our success ratio is just about where everybody would have thought it should have been: win a couple of races, have a shot in more and, hopefully, two or three guys in the Chase," White said several week ago. "Not to take anything away from any of our drivers or any of our teams -- certainly not taking anything away from Tony or Denny, they're great drivers and everybody has great futures -- but Kyle has had an extraordinary year."
Steve Addington, crew chief on Busch's No. 18 entry, said the whole team learned some important lessons in 2008 that they can carry into next season.
"One thing we learned is not to show your hand too early in the season and let these (other) guys go to work and get better than you," Addington said. "We know we've got a good package, so let's try some different things and not show our hand. We've got a good enough race team to be in the Chase.
"We had a great season," he added. "I can't complain about it."
Busch agreed.
"There are plenty of highlights: Sweeping the road course races (at Sonoma and Watkins Glen), winning the first race at Atlanta for myself with Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota and Steve Addington," Busch said. "It's been fun to win 21 races. ... Just being as fast in every series that I've been in has made the year a lot of fun."
Maybe next year Busch can add to the fun with a big finish.
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