NASCAR Cup driver Kyle Busch saw just how quickly a winning season could turn into a losing one last year. This year, he is lowering his expectations.
‘‘I’m not going to start out with my year going way up here and having it fall,’’ Busch said. ‘’. . . Last year was a big, surprising year. It was surprising how well we started out—how easy it was to win races—and how bad it would end.
‘‘Not a lot should surprise me anymore.’‘
Entering the season, Busch is among the favorites to win the championship. The question is whether his team can regain its early 2008 magic and learn to string together solid performances on days it might not have the car to beat. Busch won eight of the first 26 races last season, but his team collapsed during the 10-race Chase for the Cup, and he finished 10th.
‘‘They’re a championship contender right now,’’ Joe Gibbs Racing president J.D. Gibbs said. ‘‘They don’t have to do anything other than eliminate mistakes.’‘
Throughout the summer, Busch led Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards by several hundred points. It seemed as if he couldn’t lose.
Those celebrations ceased during the Chase.
‘‘Overall, it was a good year, only the things we wanted to do . . . it was a failure,’’ Busch said.
Busch competed in NASCAR’s top three series last season and won a record 21 races.
That didn’t provide much solace to Busch, who was dejected during the Chase.
‘‘The beginning and middle part of the year, some of those wins were too easy,’’ Busch said. ‘It was like, ‘Wow, that wasn’t as hard as it should have been,’ and you look at why, and a lot of luck was there.
‘You thought, ‘Why us?’ But it’s things beyond your control. You can look at trying to change your luck as much as you want, whether you want to put a four-leaf clover in your pocket or wear lucky underwear or whatever—that’s how it rolls sometimes.’’
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