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Busch steadily becoming a NASCAR great

NASCAR’s list of current and former Cup stars is littered with stock-car experts who never quite got the hand of turning right.

Kyle Busch will not be on that list.

He found his way down the winding road on Sunday, offering yet more overwhelming evidence that he is indeed one of the top drivers in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series and is destined to be one of the all-time greats.

In fact, Busch wrote his name beside a who’s who of stock car drivers. Ricky Rudd, Rusty Wallace, Davey Allison, Ernie Irvan, Geoff Bodine, Dale Earnhardt, Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart are stock-car drivers who mastered the Sonoma, Calif., road course.

They joined such legends as Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough, Richard Petty, David Pearson, Terry Labonte and Bill Elliott as pure stock-car racers who mastered the craft.

Among the NASCAR winners at Sonoma, only Robby Gordon and Juan Pablo Montoya are considered road-racing aces. They are experienced road racers who adapted their skills to stock cars, instead of the other way around.

The rest picked it up because they were among the best NASCAR drivers of their era.

Now, you can add Kyle Busch to that list.

“It feels pretty special to be able to do that in the Cup car now and be known as a road-course winner in the Cup Series,” says Busch, who won his first NASCAR road racer earlier this year in the Nationwide Series event at Mexico City.

“I’m not going to say I’m a road-course ace or anything, but … it means a lot to be able to put my name on that list.”

With five wins this season, Busch just keeps stockpiling accolades and offering proof that he is NASCAR’s next great star, following in the footsteps of Gordon, Stewart and Jimmie Johnson.

Busch, 23, now has nine career victories — on nine different tracks. He has won on big tracks (Talladega), intermediate tracks (California, Darlington), short tracks (Bristol), flat tracks (Phoenix, New Hampshire), high-banked tracks (Bristol, Dover) and now a road course.

Among today’s stars, only Gordon, Stewart, Kevin Harvick and Mark Martin can match that kind of versatility.

“That’s something that is pretty special, too,” Busch said Sunday. “I haven’t won at the same place twice, and we keep knocking them off the list, which is fun.”

Perhaps most importantly, Busch is winning at the tracks that are most difficult to conquer. Drivers like Johnson, Jeff Burton, Bobby Labonte, Matt Kenseth, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kurt Busch have each racked up more than a dozen victories, but none has won on a road course. And Kenseth and Kurt Busch have yet to win a restrictor-plate race.

There are a handful of tracks that test the mettle of any top NASCAR driver.

Only the best win there.

One by one, Busch has conquered nearly all of them.

When he won at Bristol last year, he proved he could win on NASCAR’s toughest, most physically demanding short track — in a new car no less.

When he won at Talladega earlier this year, he proved he could negotiate the draft and outmaneuver and outsmart NASCAR’s best on a big, fast, dangerous oval.

And when he won at Darlington, he proved he could finesse his way around what is simply NASCAR’s most difficult track to drive, demonstrating the type of skill and patience only the masters enjoy.

Now, he has won on a road course, which requires versatility, incredible focus and a whole new set of driver skills.

Busch is in the midst of a breakout campaign that will cement his status as one of NASCAR’s very best.

Track by track, he is proving it.