LOUDON, N.H. - It was a simple handshake and offering of friendly words of congratulations between competitors, though it sent ripples of shock and wonder for those around the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
Yet, there was Busch, following a hard fought road course event at Infineon Raceway on June 26, extending a handshake to Harvick in the garage.
One more sign of the evolving attitude of Busch?
Immaturity coupled with an ugly temper has long been the trait that many around the sport have pointed to as the biggest factor keeping Kyle Busch from winning a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.
The prevailing sentiment around the sport is that at 26 year old Busch, NASCAR's reigning bad boy, is growing up and realizing that not reveling in being the sport's most hated villain could be the key to becoming a Sprint Cup Series championship.
"That's the next challenge," Busch said. "We're up for it, we're looking forward to it. I feel like this is the best opportunity we've had in the past few years. [Crew chief Dave Rogers] has done a really nice job building the team and the team has been right there following him every step of the way."
Throughout his career Busch has seemingly gladly celebrated publicly the on track and off track skirmishes and scraps that have in many ways defined him as a competitor.
Though, asked Friday about his seemingly always simmering feud with Harvick and others surrounding Harvick's Richard Childress Racing organization, Busch quickly couched talk of the bad blood.
"You bring up a bad past and I'm not worried about that," Busch said. "To me, I'm worried about the future and what we can do to win a championship. Whatever it was that did or didn't initiate it or start it doesn't matter to me, it's not the point. The point is trying to move on and get over things in your life and just try to make sure that you do things the best way that you possibly know how to do it and let the rest take care of itself. For us, I feel like our opportunity here is to go out and run the best we can each and every week and when we worry about what we're doing and how our program is running, the rest of it doesn't matter."
Busch comes into today's Lenox Industrial Tools 301 leading the Sprint Cup Series standings with eight races remaining before the start of the 10-race Chase for the Championship on Sept. 18 at Chicagoland Speedway.?
The Las Vegas native got his third victory of the season on July 9 at Kentucky Speedway and stands as one of the favorites to unseat five-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson.
"It's certainly been a good start to the year," Busch said. "We feel pretty good about things and where we've been and where we've come from. ... [New Hampshire Motor Speedway is] definitely one of those places where sometimes I'm good and sometimes I'm not, but certainly hoping for better things than others. It's great to be the points leader and we'd love to be able to keep that roll, but mostly get a couple more wins maybe before the start of the Chase."
Eighteen of of Busch's 22 career Sprint Cup Series victories have come since 2008, though closing out seasons has been his failing.?
In 2008 Busch won eight of the first 26 events of the season and came into the Chase for the Championship as the huge favorite. In the first Chase race, at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Busch's day went bad with a wreck moments after the race began, which was followed by a last place finish the next week at Dover and 28th in the third chase race that year at Kansas.
Busch missed the Chase in 2009 despite four victories. With three victories, he was back in the Chase last year, but finished eighth in the final standings.
"He's always been [a championship contender], in my opinion," Johnson said. "And weird things out of his own doing, or just bad luck or whatever, have come into play in the Chase. I still at this point, do not see a clear favorite. Kyle won last week so he's probably at the top of the mind for a lot of people. He's moved up in the points and has had some good races."
Busch has never won a Chase event in the four year's he has qualified for it.
[Winning a championship] takes leadership," Busch said. "It takes guys believing in the program which I feel like we're at so we'll see how it goes. I'd certainly like to think that we're championship caliber and that if we can get one knocked out of the way then we're champions for the rest of our lives. Then we can go after two, three or however many more."
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Source: http://blogs.courant.com/autoracing/2011/07/anger-management-kyle-busch-lo.html
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