Last week after he won NASCAR race No. 99 at Kentucky one member of the media gathered in Kentucky Speedway’s media center asked Kyle Busch how cool it would be to win race 100 at Indy, in the (arguably) sport’s second most prestigious race.
“Kyle,” the man said, “I know you want to win next week or maybe at ORP, but how cool would it be if you could get win 100 at the Brickyard since you haven't won there?”
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| Kyle Busch sits at the table in Kentucky Speedway's media center after winning the Quaker State 400 with crew chief Dave Rogers |
“I'm hoping it comes at Loudon, sorry,” he said. “Certainly whenever the next one is, I'll be cherishing it just as much as I did the last one.”
Well, I tried at least.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see Kyle win this weekend, but I thought it would be awfully cool to see him take the checkers at the Brickyard for win number 100 in his NASCAR career. You can barely write a better story.
But my question at least was prefaced with, “I know you want to win next week.”
“To me,” Busch continued, “I don't want to wait that long for win 100. Hopefully we get the opportunity to run up front again and, you know, have a chance to win some other races before we get to the Brickyard.
“Brickyard is still a little ways off. Maybe we can talk about 104 or something by then.”
Kyle Busch is sitting on 100 wins in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Nationwide Series and Sprint Cup Series, and maybe more importantly, is tied with Mark Martin for the Nationwide Series all-time wins record with 49.
The first person to Victory Lane on Saturday to congratulate Busch was Martin, who has said all along that sooner or later his record would fall to the 26-year old from Las Vegas.
“It’s pretty incredible,” Martin said. “Some people can learn how to drive these racecars if they really, really want to and work really, really hard at it, but the guys that already know how before they ever do it and they work really hard at it are always more successful. That’s the case with Kyle. He was a natural from the first time he slipped into one of these big stock cars on a big racetrack.
“It’s been amazing to watch and it’s hard for me to get my arms around that he is where he is at his age. It’s amazing. It’s really great that NASCAR is in a position today to give an opportunity to young drivers and get an opportunity because 30 years ago having a 25-year-old driver was not something that a top team would want to have.
It’s really cool to see, and I’m just as impressed as everyone else with this guy – every week.”
Busch wanted the media folks to stop harping constantly on his numbers, but was asked if being mentioned in the same breath as Hall of Famers like Richard Petty and future Hall of Famers like Mark Martin had sunk in yet.
“You have to retire first right, to get in the Hall of Fame?” said Busch. “Apparently (Mark Martin)’s not going to be an inductee anytime soon — that’s alright — more power to him. I said on TV, he’s young at heart and he wants to keep doing what he’s doing. That’s awesome.”
So maybe I was wrong for asking Busch if it would be cool to win at Indy. Obviously he’ll still be gunning as hard as ever to win the Brickyard 400, but maybe by then it will be NASCAR win No. 104. We’ll have to wait 13 days to find out.
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