Busch dominates on short track at Bristol

By David Poole | The Charlotte Observer • Published March 23, 2009

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BRISTOL, Tenn. – As Kyle Busch keeps doing remarkable things in race cars, such as dominating Sunday's Food City 500 for his second Sprint Cup victory this season, people keep trying to come up with somebody to compare him to.

How about Dizzy Dean, the Hall of Fame pitcher who famously said, "It ain't braggin' if you can back it up?"

After leading 378 of the 503 laps run at Bristol Motor Speedway and holding off Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin in a green-white-checkered finish to win for the second time in three races, the 23-year-old Busch admitted he'd never heard of Dean.

But he didn't mind the quote.

"That's pretty good," he said. "But I don't know that I was bragging."

Maybe that's not exactly what Busch was doing in his interview well after the finish of Sunday's race, but it was certainly in the neighborhood.

He said, for instance, that he doesn't pay much attention to how many T-shirts are sold bearing his team's colors or his likeness.

"I'm not out there to be No. 1. We all know who No. 1 is and forever will be," Busch said in an obvious reference to Dale Earnhardt Jr. "...I go out there to win races, to be No. 1 on the race track. That's where I feel like I win.

"For me, I don't think I would enjoy having the most fans out there. I actually like the way I am, the role I portray. And I think that there's probably too much pressure on one guy's shoulders who doesn't seem to win very often. But for us, it's a blast to go out there and do what we do."

Earnhardt essentially took Busch's ride at Hendrick Motorsports before the start of the 2008 season. Since that time, Earnhardt, who finished 14th Sunday, has won once while Busch has won 10 times.

Then there was the discussion of Busch's pit crew, whose work on Sunday's final pit stops with just more than 50 laps to go allowed Busch to get off pit road first and stay in front of Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson, both of whom believed they might have won if their crew had done the same for them.

One day earlier, many of the same crew men had worked on Busch's car in a Nationwide race here that Busch also dominated but did not win because a tire got loose on his final stop. After the race, Busch parked his car in Turn 3 and walked immediately to the tunnel out of this .533-mile track, leaving his crew to come fetch the car.

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