Busch brothers brush off boos
BROOKLYN, Mich. – Kurt Busch remembers when kid brother Kyle would try running with a much older group of kids as they were growing up in Las Vegas.
“He was seven years younger than I was, and he was always trying to hang with the older crowd, with my friends and things that we were doing,” recalled Busch, the 2004 NASCAR Cup champion. “So, whether it was baseball or radio-controlled cars or racing in general, he was always with tougher competition, and so it made him better as a younger kid.”
The Busch Boys have come a long way since Kurt was running Dwarf Cars at age 14 at Pahrump Valley Speedway near Las Vegas and Kyle drove Legend Cars at Las Vegas Motor Speedway at 13.
Most would say Kyle, 23, has since passed Kurt, 29. Kyle, in his first year with Joe Gibbs Racing, is a threat to win anything he enters. Kurt, in his third year with Penske Racing, is just hoping to return to his glory days.
Arriving today at Michigan International Speedway in advance of Sunday’s LifeLock 400, the 15th Cup race of the year, Kyle is first in points while Kurt is 21st – an underachieving position for a driver of his ability. The elder Busch, once the pride of Roush Fenway Racing, isn’t jealous of his sibling, however.
“Kyle was a real quiet guy, just like me, and our work ethic is installed from our father, and that is (to) just go out there and work hard and go for those race wins,” Busch said. “Just a regular guy, and he’s thrown into the spotlight. I’m real happy for him anyway.”
It would be a stretch for anyone to call Kyle Busch a regular guy, particularly the boo birds who have been on his case for his aggressive driving and colorful comments about other drivers this year. But you can’t deny his deft touch behind the wheel, nor his sheer speed.
“I guess I portrayed that a little bit – being arrogant and cocky,” Kyle said. “It’s kind of frustrating because I don’t feel like that’s who I am or that’s who I’ve tried to portray. But that’s basically the reason why I feel like I’m disliked. It’s not necessarily just because of the on-track success.”
Kurt defends his brother, who competed in Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Craftsman Truck races at three different tracks last weekend.
“He’s just a racer at heart, and he wants to race, race, race,” he said. “You can’t take that out of him. You can’t take it away from him. He’s on the gas. He’s young. You’re only young once.”
Kurt may want to see Kyle succeed, but he isn’t forgetting that he’s a former champ who still can win more titles.
Kurt won last year’s August race at MIS and the June Cup event in 2003. He’s coming off an eighth-place finish at Pocono last weekend and thinks he can get his No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge up front again Sunday.
“It’s the manufacturer’s backyard, and everybody gets excited to carry their nameplates to victory lane at Michigan,” Kurt said. “I’m waiting for when it’s my turn to get hot. We want something in our notebook to click and turn our car into a top-five car each week. Maybe it’s just around the corner, and I hope that we have a chance to chip away at 12th place in points.”
Fans are likely to give Kyle Busch a heated welcome at MIS today. But might the boos turn to cheers for him one day?
“I don’t know what the Busch brothers do, sometimes, to have the fans go against them,” Kurt said. “But we’re just hard-charging racers like we have been taught to do by our father and by the competition. Sometimes it’s not well-perceived. But we’re just out there racing hard, usually putting on great racing action, and sometimes it just gets misled.”
Kyle said he won’t lose sleep over his bad-boy image.
“There are a lot of people out there that only get to see what I am … on the Internet or seeing it on TV or whatever. They don’t know me as a person. I’ve got a lot of great people that work with me, and I’ve got a lot of great fans that like me.”