Kyle Busch 2019 Champion

&By Alex Apple IN RAREFIED AIR, BUSCH’S SUCCESS ON OFF THE TRACK PUTS HIM ALONGSIDE

Kyle Busch’s personality on the track has long matched his hometown. Having nicknames that span from “Rowdy,” to, “Wild Thing,” to, “Candy Man,” speak to the many facets of Busch’s riding style, much like his eclectic hometown, Las Vegas.

The driver of the No. 18 M&M’s/Interstate Batteries Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing took home the 2019 Championship, adding another illustrious chapter to what is quickly becoming a storied career.

Busch is the younger brother of the 2004 Nextel Cup Series Champion, Kurt, but if he ever felt over-shadowed by his older brother, the spotlight is his now with a second Championship under his belt.

Joe Gibbs officially has a juggernaut on his hands, and when Busch emerged as the latest Champion, some speculated it came only because two teammates were slowed by mess-ups on pit road.

Busch won the season finale at Homestead-Miami which snapped a 21-race winless stream and held off his supercharged teammates Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr.

Now Busch stands alone with Jimmie Johnson as the only active drivers with multiple Cup Championships.

Twenty-eight years after he learned to drive around his family’s cul-de-sac, Busch is on top of the racing world. His racing career officially began in 1998 when he was 13 years old. His dominance started early as he captured more than 65 races in legends car racing, achieving early success at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

He would move on to late models and then the Craftsman Truck Series when he drove the No. 99 Ford for Roush Racing in 2001.

Busch is the reason that NASCAR has a minimum age of 18 years to compete because Busch was under the legal smoking age when he raced in a ’98 event sponsored by Marlboro cigarettes. Undeterred, Busch graduated early from high school, hit the track and never looked back.

He won five times in 2019, but his NASCAR career didn’t start out quite as hot. In his 2005 rookie season, Busch won once at New Hampshire International Speedway, but even at that young age, Busch qualified for the Chase for the Nextel Cup for the first time in his career as he garnered second place for his efforts at Richmond International Raceway which got him into the top ten in points. g

BUSCH’S SUCCESS ON OFF THE TRACK PUTS HIM ALONGSIDE RACING’S LEGENDS

Hard to believe that two years later, Busch would be replaced by Hendrick Motorsports. Of course, that replacement was an Earnhardt, but Busch said the decision to void his contract had been mutual. For the next 13 years, he would find a home at a budding dynasty Joe Gibbs Racing.

Like any driver that races long enough, not all of Busch’s career has come up sunny and rosy. He was involved in a vicious 2007 crash at Talladega Superspeedway that saw NASCAR have to launch an investigation into what cracked his HANS device.

“I’ve been in some pretty bad wrecks, but that was the first time I ever got upside down or anything,” he said to ESPN after that race. “It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t too terribly bad when I was on the roof going down the straightaway, but when it headed toward the grass I planned for the worst.

“I flipped my visor open and put my hands in my helmet to grab on, then I tucked down and got in the fetal position and planned for the worst. I just wanted to support my head as best I could for when it started flipping.”

Busch was not injured in the crash, but his accident at the 27th lap showed just how much impact drivers have to sustain in the drivers’ seat.

By 2007, Busch was well on his way to establishing himself as one of the circuit’s best drivers. He became the first Nextel Cup Series driver to win in the Car of Tomorrow when he took home a win over Jeff Burton in the Food City 500. Of course, Busch, who is never shy, was no fan of the Car of Tomorrow – but true to form, he won anyway.

Long-time driver and well-respected competitor, Jeff Burton, said after the race, “I have a lot of respect for Kyle. He’s always raced me clean, and I returned that. Half the grandstands will say it was wrong and half will say it’s right, but that’s how I chose to do it.”

Thirteen years later, that win at the Food City 500 is just a statistic, one of Busch’s 208 career NASCAR wins, one of 56 career Cup Series wins.

After exiting the car as a now two-time Champion, Busch saw his 4-year-old son Brexton waiting. The two shared a warm embrace, and his son asked to be thrown in the air as was their typical post-victory tradition.

It’s family that now motivates the 34-year-old driver who was mildly subdued after winning his second Championship. He had raced hard for the title in each of the last three seasons, but he fell short a year earlier thanks to an error in the pits. The 2019 Playoff was a magical run, showing off the very best of NASCAR and its talented teams. Each driver was running so well that Las Vegas produced even odds for all four drivers entering the last race. Nonetheless, many would have picked Busch as the least likely to win, opting for Hamlin, Harvic or Truex instead who had all won Playoff races already.

But that November night, Busch was nearly flawless, as was his team. Gibbs secured his fifth Cup title in the same year that his cars started 1-2-3 in the Daytona 500. How is that for wire-to-wire dominance? “Do it for J.D.” proved to be a special rallying cry for the entire Gibbs team. Then there is Toyota, cementing itself as the latest top-dog with its third Championship in five years.

A look back at the second Championship season for Busch reveals several crucial moments that proved decisive in hindsight.

In July, his brother, Kurt, rallied to hold him off in a shootout where the two finished nearly side-by-side, but Kurt secured the win. After the Darlington race, Busch clinched his second consecutive regular season Championship thanks to his consistency, capped off with a third-place finish at Darlington.

“Obviously we set out to do that here a few weeks back,” Busch said. “We knew when (Logano) passed us and got the lead from us that it was going to be hard to get it back. But fortunately, we went back into stage racing a little bit more and tried to get some of the stage points, and that helped us.

They weren’t able to capitalize on stage points. It’s good to get the regular-season Championship, to get that 15 extra bonus points for the Playoffs. That’s what we set out to do.”

A Cup Championship still remained the ultimate goal.

In the Round of 8, Aric Almirola had Busch’s fate in his hands and nearly ended the season for the eventual Champion. Almirola sent Busch to a 14th place finish, but Busch lived to fight on. In all, Busch had 27 top-10s in 2019.

Throughout his life, Busch has made success look relatively easy. He was an honor student even as his childhood activities always included time behind the wheel.

At age 16, he had already begun to pique the interest of NASCAR car owners which led to his debut on the Truck Series in August of 2001. He would start that race 23rd and finish ninth for Roush-Fenway Racing.

Before he even turned 18, Busch had his first contract with Hendrick Motorsports, and he won his first ARCA Series race at Nashville from the pole position. He didn’t have to wait long for his second win either. That came one week later.

After his birth certificate showed his age as 18, Busch entered the Nationwide Series and – yet again – quickly became a force. He finished second at Charlotte in his very first start, and he ended the year with back-to-back second-place finishes and three top-10s.

The next season, Busch’s first win in a NASCAR Series with a May 2004 win at Richmond. Four more victories at Charlotte, Kentucky, O’Reilly and Michigan would soon follow.

Since proving his dedication to winning, Busch’s influence is now felt through his work with Kyle Busch Motorsports. Quickly, that team became a contender in the GANDER RV & OUTDOORS Truck Series. The team holds the records for most career wins (68) and most wins in a single season (14) which came in 2014.

Over the last half decade, the team has produced two Championship winners in Erik Jones in 2015 and Christopher Bell two years later.

The team works out of a cuttingedge 77,000 square foot facility or headquarters where they prepare their Toyota Tundras. Inside, a homage to Busch’s personal

success. His No. 18 M&Ms car in which he won the 2015 title sits for adoring fans to view.

In 2010, Busch married Samantha Sarcinella on New Year’s Eve. The reception and party went until one in the morning. Sarcinella confirmed that Busch got his biggest win on his wedding day.

“The ceremony was really traditional and beautiful and simple,” she told the Charlotte Observer. “Since it was a holiday and we had so many people flying in from different areas, we said, ‘let’s make this an all-day event.’”

Busch had proposed to his love just before the 2010 Daytona race in the living room of the mobile home that the couple inhabits while they are on the road. Samantha now helps run the Kyle Busch Foundation and the retail side of Kyle Busch Motorsports.

Since their marriage, Samantha and Kyle Busch have started the Bundle of Joy Fund which advocates for Infertility Awareness and Support and tries to help remove the financial barriers that couples face when they want to start a family.

The fund’s website features the pictures of 21 beautiful children born into the world thanks to the monetary of the fund.

Samantha is even creating her own empire through the fund, blogging and beauty. As her website states, she is an example of the modern day “boss babe.”

Kyle and Samantha have reached the pinnacle in their worlds while candidly talking about their own struggles with starting a family. The couple told NBC Sports that they used in-vitro fertilization when they had their son Brexton in 2015. Three years later, Samantha suffered a miscarriage while pregnant with their second child.

It’s a topic that Samantha has discussed now on her social media and the show, Racing Wives, but she hopes her advice falls on the ears of young hopeful mothers who need to hear her friendly advice.

“Trying to have a baby was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in life. When I was 26, we decided that we wanted to start a family. You could handle one, two, three, four negative pregnancy tests. But by that ninth, 10th, 11th [one], that’s when it’s hard. It’s hard to pick up the pieces again.

“We started the fertility drugs. They don’t tell you too much about the side effects of them. You turn insane. Nobody’s telling you what’s happening to yourself as a woman and g

what’s happening to your marriage. Nobody’s telling you that you’re going to sit on the floor and cry for hours and your husband’s going to be there to support you, but at the same time, you’re like, ‘What if I can’t give him kids?’”

Kyle stuck by his wife during those trying times, and it’s that feeling of togetherness that Samantha has wished for other women who she doesn’t want to “feel so alone.”

As the decade ended, Kyle Busch was the winningest driver of the decade. His win at Miami sealed that fate. “Rowdy Nation” has had plenty to cheer about as the M&Ms car has repeatedly raced and exceeded their expectations. Victims of their own success? Not Busch and his team.

Nearly 15 years ago, Busch could have probably never guessed how good the marriage between him and Gibbs would be. Toyota has taken them both on a special ride.

Now in his mid-30s, Busch has another challenge. Can the driver in rarified air with two Championships eek closer to the Jimmie Johnsons of the world with a third or fourth title? Certainly, his track record would say that doubting him will be a fool’s errand.

Busch and Jimmie Johnson. There it was typed again.

Not bad company to keep.

As he climbed into his No. 22 Team Penske Ford for the final race of the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup season, Joey Logano had some prophetic words for Daniel Lynch, his interior mechanic. much of the season first or second in the points standings, winning three playoff races in a row at Charlotte, Kansas and Talladega. uck to our ways. We felt like, ‘This is what worked last year (in 2016) and we almost won the Championship then.’ … But then you go to the next season and you get spanked. We needed to take a step back and say, ‘Okay, we need to think things over.’

“The rebound started maybe four or five races before the Playoffs (in 2017), and it’s been a slow but steady climb back to the top. It’s just so crazy to think about. We dropped like an elevator and we took the flight of stairs back to the top, man.

“To be able to do that, and fighting together with the whole race team – not just the two of us in myself and Todd – means a lot. You make a little gain here, a little gain here, a little gain there. And all of a sudden, we’re Champions the next year. What a fight.”

There were skirmishes along the way, including one with Truex at Martinsville in last year’s Playoffs when Logano used the old-school bump-and-run to move Truex out of the way for the win that punched his ticket into the Championship 4. Truex was furious, stating afterward of Logano, “He may have won the battle, but he ain’t winning the damn war. I’m not going to let him win it.” “I’m a hard racer,” he told reporters. “I don’t think that’s a secret to anyone – and we are here to win a Championship. … This was our shot (to get to the Championship 4), maybe our only shot. So, we had to make it happen.”

Wallace said he thinks the unapologetic, hard-driving approach Logano has adopted is just what the sport needs in an era when many of the drivers are close friends away from the track.

“One thing about him is that he doesn’t appear to care much about what the other drivers think of him and he sure hates to lose,” Wallace said. “You saw that in the Playoffs. He didn’t apologize for it. He just kept saying he did what he felt he had to do.

“Some drivers these days think too much about whether or not they’re doing the fair thing; he just goes for it. That might cause some ill will in the garage and maybe will get him taken out himself somewhere down the line, but you have to admire him for living in and seizing the moment when it’s there. It’s an old-school mentality somewhat lacking in the sport these days.”

Wallace said it’s hard to believe Logano is only 28 years old. He won’t turn 29 until this May. And that, Wallace added, is likely bad news for Logano’s fellow Cup competitors.

“Joey is what I would call a young veteran,” Wallace added. “He’s incredibly young, yet he’s been racing so long that I expect him to just keep getting better like a Kyle Busch has done and continues to do. You look at Joey Logano and you’re like, ‘Oh, he’s been here forever.’ Then you look up how old he is and you’re like, ‘Really, he’s only 28?’… “His best very well may be yet to come.”