Kyle Busch: Superstar in the making

When you talk about a driver with nine victories from the last 12 race weekends, who has led 20 of the 23 points-paying races he has entered during the same period and won nearly 40 per cent of them, then that someone is undoubtedly a pretty special driver.

At 26 years of age, Kyle Busch is just a handful of victories away from taking his 100th win across NASCAR's top three divisions; the Sprint Cup, Nationwide Series and Truck Series.

That means that within eight years of his NASCAR debut, he could easily find himself appearing in the top three of the all-time winners list for national series, behind only Richard Petty and David Pearson. Some achievement.

In fairness to the NASCAR legends of the past, all of their wins came from Cup races (or Grand National events, as they were known before 1971). Busch has 21 victories of the kind to his name, ranking him 30th on the all-time list and eighth among the current field. By the time Petty had reached the same age, he had 27 Cup wins to reflect on.

"Nothing to take away from Richard [Petty] or anybody else that raced back in those days, but I pulled up some entry lists and some finishes and sometimes there's only 12 or 18 cars that entered the race," says Busch.

A typical Busch victory celebration © LAT

"The only guy they had to beat was John Smith, the local guy or whoever. That's not taking away from those guys. They built this sport and what it is today. They won those races and for me, I feel like our realm of motorsport now has come so far from what it was that it's definitely a lot harder to win every week. There's definitely a lot more involved."

Young Kyle has clearly had a look at what he's accomplished thus far to place himself into some context. He has a point too, in so much as the sport has obviously evolved since the early days and that the closeness of competition has made every victory more difficult to come by.

In terms of the current crop of drivers, Busch stacks up well. Four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon had 42 victories to his name by the age of 26, and managed an incredible 33 wins from 1996-'98. But it's taken him another 13 years to rack up his most recent 41 victories. Furthermore, since Busch made his Cup debut at Las Vegas in '04, only Jimmie Johnson (48 wins) and Tony Stewart (22) have taken more Cup victories than him, and none of them are even close to him in terms of overall wins.

What Busch's impressive numbers show is that he is one of that unique kind, a driver born with God-given natural talent. At 17, he had already been signed by Rick Hendrick and was poised for a bright future, one that is getting brighter with every race.

"When Kyle sits in the car, he understands exactly what it's doing and he can transfer that information to the team very, very precisely," says Laerte Zatta, Toyota's NASCAR Nationwide and Truck Series program manager, who has been seen most of Busch's victories since 2008 from within. He has been in the sport since 2004 after achieving great success in both CART and IndyCar with Honda and Toyota.

"In NASCAR you don't have any instrumentation or anything and you base yourself on the driver's feedback. Kyle knows exactly what the car needs to go faster. He knows when the team has to fix the problem and when he has to change his line or braking points on the track. He seems able to adapt very quickly according to the circumstances and you don't see that very often."

Busch (18) keeps racking up the Truck Series wins for his own Toyota squad © LAT

As part of his job, Zatta has seen in detail where Busch makes a difference from an engineering standpoint. He knows what he likes from a car and what he doesn't. Very rarely can precise numbers be put on driving parameters in NASCAR, only in testing in fact (as the use of telemetry is not allowed at race events). Those readings, according to Zatta, reveal Busch's supreme feel for the car as he's able to find grip and speed in areas that others simply can't comprehend.

His ability to find the true limit on cold tyres makes him a constant threat at restarts, where he's been one of those yielding from NASCAR's recently implemented double-file format.

"Kyle likes driving an oversteering car, which we call loose," adds Zatta."That helps the car go faster as you can carry more momentum through the corner. The same balance for other drivers is kind of scary in their own words. They'd say they're about to crash, while for Kyle it's just good.

"It's very interesting when you have the opportunity to go testing with him and you can instrument the car [with data logging systems] and look at the lateral acceleration and exactly how the car is behaving. We can see how much he is able to extract from the car. He knows exactly where the limit is and he's able to direct the team to help him achieve that.

"We actually joke when we talk to the crew chiefs at our meetings at the track. When Kyle's crew chief says their car is a little loose, which he call 'free', the other crew chiefs look at him and say 'well, if it's loose for Kyle it's screaming loose for us'.

"You can even see it on the TV, when he's sideways coming into the corner. But he's able to control it; he knows when to back off and where the limit is. Tony Stewart was similar when we had the chance to work with him but I think Kyle takes it to another level. He can perform on any kind of track and whether you put him in a Cup car, a Nationwide or a Truck, you know he's going to be a contender for the win. He's very young and he has the passion to win."

For all of Kyle's talent and wins however, there's only one title to show for, his 2009 Nationwide championship. In 2011, despite two non-finishes due to an engine failure at Las Vegas and a crash at Talladega, he ranks third in the Cup points with two wins that have him in the brink of securing a place in the Chase already (this year the two drivers between 11th and 20th in the points, and with the most victories, will get wildcard entries into the Chase).

His first big win came in the Busch Series race at Richmond in 2004 with Hendrick © LAT

Busch has been - and by quite a margin too - the driver who has spent the most laps in the lead so far this season. He has led 797 of the 3297 laps so far in 2011, or 24.3 per cent of them to be precise. That's been on all kinds of different ovals too. To put that into context, the next best numbers come from Cup champion Johnson, who has led less than 10 per cent of the laps.

After stepping out of the shadows of Gordon and Johnson at Hendrick Motorsports and jumping ship to Joe Gibbs Racing, Busch looked very much in control of the 2008 Cup as he led the standings until the start of the Chase, winning eight times. But his form deserted him during the final 10 races as he failed to win at all, being affected by, respectively, suspension and engine failures at the first two Chase races at New Hampshire and Dover.

"What happened with Kyle in '08 is he had many issues into the Chase and that's something you can't afford these days in order to contend for a title," says Zatta, who saw Busch win 13 NASCAR races in that same year, including Nationwide and Truck races. "I think Joe Gibbs Racing is maturing as well to get to that level. I'm sure when the Chase starts the team will be a lot better prepared to make sure they don't make any mistakes in the last 10 races.

"I think in order to win a Cup title you need more than a driver like Kyle. The team has to be in sync and everything has to work perfectly. That's why Hendrick and Johnson especially are so successful; even on their bad days, they're still better than most of the competition."

The year 2008 was the first for Busch at JGR and since then many things have changed, even the man himself. Kyle is now married to Samantha, always at the track and very involved with his racing. He has set up his own team in the Truck Series, in which he has already won three of the five races so far this season and will field former F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen at Charlotte at the end of the month.

On the Cup side he's now into his second full season with crew chief Dave Rogers, with whom he has built a strong relationship. Even at places where he's not been particularly strong in the past, he's performed better this year - Martinsville being a prime example of that. Last month he claimed his best finish at NASCAR's shortest venue, leading almost a third of the distance and finishing third. Pocono is his other weak link, but we will see next month how he fares - this time in his 2011 spec.

A force to be reckoned with in the Cup © LAT

Until his bust-up with Kevin Harvick at Darlington (which has some roots in last year's season-finale), there had been unusually little controversy associated with Busch this season; an incident with Carl Edwards at Phoenix (Edwards says he owes Busch one for that) being the exception. Busch's attitude with the media has changed for the better this year too, and he has been more talkative - especially when things don't go this way. He's the sort of guy that used to fume at finishing second, but is now managing his temper much more effectively - in public, at least.

However, the true test for his improved self may come in the Chase, as he looks set to be Joe Gibbs Racing's trump card this year. For the past two it's been Denny Hamlin, but last year's runner up failed when the championship was on the line at the Homestead season finale, and the after-effects have dragged on into the current campaign, leaving him back in 16th in the points and without a win. Hamlin does, at least, seem to have turned a corner recently, unlike Joey Logano, whose year has failed to produce the form that made him the top points scorer among the non-title contenders during last year's Chase.

Should Busch leave the Harvick saga behind him and reassume control of his temper, this should be the year in which he makes his first serious push for the title. Despite having failed to make the Chase only once since 2006, he's never really mixed it with the likes of Johnson, Stewart and Harvick during the final few weeks of the season.

Busch has already proven time after time that he can win races, even three on a NASCAR weekend as he managed at Bristol last year. He has achieved almost everything possible in Nationwide, and its safe to say that he will surpass Mark Martin's all-time record of 49 Series wins by the summer. By the time he does that, the only thing that the other legends that currently head him in the all-time winners list will have that he doesn't is an all-important Cup title.

He is NASCAR's most unpopular driver with fans, but that's down to Dale Earnhardt Jr's legions of fans hating him rather than an outright dislike by the majority. It's quite likely, therefore that when he does eventually become a Cup champion, that he'll make a few thousand in the stands pretty irate. He though, will simply perform a burnout, take a bow, wave and smile as he does every time he wins.

The 2011 season hasn't become the Kyle Busch show yet, but he's certainly a man that Johnson and co will have on their championship radars come the autumn.