Kyle Busch is the Best Road Racer in NASCAR

---

Copyright © 2008 Bench Racing Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
If you are not reading this article in a news reader, the website you are viewing it on is guilty of copyright infringement.
Please report this site through the contact link on OnPitRow.com.
(digital signature: 0cfdbe0a46fcc45c1d0ce390e8adfabc)

---

Like the driver himself, the headline may cause NASCAR fans to scream foul.

Facts can be made to say about anything that you want them to. They can be twisted, manipulated and stretched in any number of ways to get a point across. It is tough to argue that anyone is better than Rowdy at road racing in NASCAR at this point in time.

No one in NASCAR history has won three road races in a single season until The Shrub did it in 2008. Winning both Cup races at Infineon and Watkins Glen along with the Nationwide race in Mexico City moves him to the head of the list.

ON PIT ROW, the radio show, every week asks four “Fast Lap” questions that are worded in such a way as to spur debate. One of this week’s Fast lap questions asked if Kyle Busch is the best road racer ever. NASCAR has been running road races as long as there has been NASCAR, and no one has been able to win more than two in a season.

Two names have been brought up as better road racers than Kyle. One is Dan Gurney. Gurney was one helluva road racer, no doubt about it, but I don’t consider him a NASCAR driver. He was the epitome of a road course ringer in NASCAR’s youth. Gurney posted 5 wins on road courses in his NASCAR “career”; but again he was never a full timer and four of those came at one race track–Riverside. Considering the road course stops on the circuits today, Riverside seems more like Pocono than a true road course.

Jeff Gordon has nine wins on the lefts and rights. A pretty remarkable number until you consider the level of competition that he raced against to gain many of those wins. Gordon began winning road course races when only ten or fifteen percent of the field could possibly win one. The first attempts for the NASCAR elite to run at The Glen and later at Infineon was a scene out of a Buster Keaton movie. Gordon was able to pile up wins while the rest of the field was using the two road courses as ‘throw aways”. Who can forget the scenes of top notch drivers doing more driving in the dirt than on the course?

The level of competition is higher. The race tracks are tougher and in my mind, no one in NASCAR history has done it better than Kyle Busch. Busch’s sponsor M&M/Mars has put together a promotion to find the most colorful fan in NASCAR. Check it out at http://tsc.nascar.com/mmsracing/
it is some fun–much like watching their driver has become.

Kyle is turning heads on the race track and turning detractors into fans. Love him or hate him, the boy has talent and some flair for the dramatic.

Photo credits:BethAnne Heisler/ON PIT ROW
Icon Sports Media