Kyle, Kurt Busch not taking Daytona 500 qualifying races for granted
Sweethearts exchanging chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training. NBA all-stars playing matador defense. The Busch Brothers of Las Vegas racing in the Daytona 500.
These are rites of February.
They are not rights of February. They are not inalienable.
Ask the Busch Brothers of Las Vegas.
Today, Kyle Busch and Kurt Busch — one NASCAR Sprint Cup championship each, no Daytona 500 trophies between them — will compete in 125-mile qualifying races that will set the field for Sunday’s holy grail of stock car racing.
Business as usual. Both men raced in last year’s twin qualifiers, too.
They would not race in the 2015 Daytona 500.
It wasn’t business as usual when Kyle plowed into the wall during the Xfinity Series race the day before the 500, suffering a badly broken leg and foot.
It wasn’t business as usual when NASCAR indefinitely suspended Kurt after a family court judge in Delaware decided he probably “committed an act of domestic violence” against his former girlfriend.
So replacement drivers wheeled their cars around the high-banked oval while the Busch brothers sat out the big one. Kurt said he didn’t even watch on TV. Kyle was in too much pain to.
After missing 11 races, Kyle would launch an improbable comeback that would result in him winning the series championship in the most dramatic of fashions. With a rod and nuts and bolts holding his leg and foot together.
After missing three races, Kurt was reinstated by NASCAR — nobody is able to compartmentalize like Kurt Busch — and raced his way into the Sprint Cup championship with a mini-comeback of his own.
This is what Kyle said on Daytona 500 media day Tuesday: “It was not quite the way we would have wanted to start a season here last time around 365 days ago, but things obviously turned the corner well. Was able to get through rehab and get back in the racecar and then go through the season, win some races — three in a row at one point, my first Brickyard 400 — and now to be Sprint Cup Series champion was pretty spectacular.
“We’d love nothing more than to continue on our championship celebration all the way through this weekend here in winning a Daytona 500 as well.”
This is what Kurt said: “We have a lot of things that can give you motivation. This year is no exception with the chance to go win the Daytona 500. It’s right there in front of myself, Kyle, for his team being a championship-defending team.
“We have so much motivation in all directions to be successful. Now we have to go out there and do it.”
The Busch brothers are 0-for-24 at the Daytona 500, which only shows how difficult it is to win it. (Richard Petty won it seven times, and The King was a great driver, but he mostly drove when the engines weren’t outfitted with horsepower-draining restrictor plates, which bunches the field into giant knots.)
Kyle is 0-for-10. Other than a fourth in 2008, when he and Kurt helped push Ryan Newman to the win during a final-lap shootout, he has never really finished well in the 500. His other finishes: 19, 34, 17, 8, 14, 41, 24, 23, 38.
Kurt is 0-for-14 at Daytona, but at least he has been the bridesmaid three times. He also has a fourth- and a fifth-place finish in the Great American Race, as Ken Squier used to call it.
They aren’t alone on the list of drivers who have yet to spray sports drink on their crew in Victory Lane.
Tony Stewart, Mark Martin, Rusty Wallace, Terry Labonte, Greg Biffle, Jeff Burton, Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Brad Keselowski, Bobby Labonte, Ricky Rudd, Harry Gant, Kasey Kahne, Bobby Isaac, Neil Bonnett, Ned Jarrett — you could film a continuous loop of Fram Oil Filters commercials featuring guys who haven’t won the Daytona 500.
Pay me now, or pay me later. They paid the great Dale Earnhardt much later. The man with the mustache was 0-for-19 when he finally won the 500 in 1998. Three years later he died at Daytona, trying to win another one.
“I just felt the rug was wiped out from underneath me,” Kurt Busch said about not getting to race last year. “We’re here with a good shot at winning. I was here with a good shot at winning last year. This is more for making up for lost time. This is that year, I’m feeling it.”
Kyle Busch said: “The No. 1 most important thing is trying to win the Daytona 500. After that, we will try to win the Coke 600 at Charlotte, or really any Cup race at Charlotte, which I haven’t been able to do yet. Past that, I would love to win at Martinsville and be able to win one of those grandfather clocks, and also win at the other track I haven’t won at, like Kansas and Pocono. Beyond that, I would certainly still like to win 200 overall races and …”
So there a lot of races Kyle Busch still wants to win. He wants to win the Daytona 500 most. Ditto for his big brother.
They’ve got to get through today’s qualifying races first. It’s an annual rite of February that must not be taken for granted.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski
