Kyle Busch Making a Case as the 2015 Title Favorite with Incredible Recent Run

What more can be said about Kyle Busch?

He missed the first 11 races of the season due to injury. NASCAR chairman Brian France granted him a waiver so that he can make the Sprint Cup Series’ championship Chase if he reaches the top 30 in points over the next seven races. He’s won three of the past four, each at a different kind of track.

Busch is now only 58 points behind David Gilliland, who occupies 30th in the standing and has raced 19 times to Busch’s eight. Jaws never closed in on prey so rapidly.

“This is such an awesome win and such an awesome comeback,” Busch, who could be forgiven for his immodesty afterward, said. “Our cars [at Joe Gibbs Racing] are faster than what they were last year. This is a crazy sport, and you never know how it’s going to turn out.”

What’s left to be said? Oh, maybe that not only is Busch likely to make the Chase, but he might just be the favorite to win it.

This was not the expectation when Daytona track workers carried him off to the hospital on a stretcher on Feb. 21.

Races	Wins	Top-5 finishes	Top-10s	Poles	Laps Led	Avg. FInish
102	1	30	47	2	2,467	16.9

The student of history would hesitate to declare Busch the favorite for the championship—been there, done that. The younger Busch brother has staggered down the stretch more times than a bobtailed nag at the Camptown race track.

(It’s five miles long, you know. Doo-dah. Doo-dah.)

Chuck Burton/Associated Press

The actual track—one indigenous to cars, not nags—where Busch’s latest victory occurred was New Hampshire Motor Speedway, which is slightly more than one mile long.

In his career, Busch has competed in 102 Chase races (in other words, the final 10 of each season). Of his 32 career victories to date, 13 occurred on tracks between one and two miles in length. Nine were on short tracks (shorter than a mile). Six were on ovals of more than two miles. Four were on road courses.

One was in the Chase. It was at Phoenix International Raceway on Nov. 13, 2005.

Self-evidently, Busch has never won a Sprint Cup championship, which hinge on performance in the final 10 races. Only once has a driver captured the championship without winning in the Chase—Tony Stewart in that same year, 2005—and the current format makes it more difficult than it was then.

The emergence of “a new Kyle Busch” has been declared only slightly fewer times than the existence of “a New South” and in a wildly shorter space of time. This time, in Busch’s case, it may just be valid.

He’s still in pain. On the day before the Daytona 500, in a crash during an Xfinity Series race, Busch suffered a broken right leg and left foot when his Toyota crashed at a harsh angle into a wall that wasn’t cushioned by a so-called SAFER barrier.

Jim Cole/Associated Press

“I think, any time any person that goes through the kinds of setbacks that I went through...it changes you a little bit,” Busch said at a media conference on July 17 in New Hampshire. “Some look toward the brighter side of things, and others tend to look toward the darker side of things.

“Fortunately, for me and everybody I’ve had around me...it’s been really, really fun to come out of this experience and be able to grow and learn a little bit. Just maybe enjoy things a little bit differently, and that’s what it’s been all about.”

Busch is now 30 years old. He’s matured, which is what people, not just race car drivers and athletes, tend to do as they age. Perhaps adversity gave him the boost he needed. Perhaps now he is ready to be a champion, which is a status his level of talent implies.

Busch said in his post-race media conference that what has happened in the past month is more than he anticipated.

“I don’t think any of us would have [imagined winning three races in a span of four],” he said.

The key to winning the 5-hour Energy 301 was an example of Busch seizing an opportunity that didn’t get him the lead immediately. It got him only back on the lead lap. He had pitted (“I thought I had a tire going down and there was oil on the track,” he said.) and had to get past the two leaders in order to have a chance.

When the leaders hesitated, suddenly snarled in traffic, Busch’s Toyota swerved past and in front of Brad Keselowski’s Ford, then dove low to roar past Kevin Harvick’s Chevy. Then, NASCAR officials responded to widespread claims that the track was coated in oil, waved a yellow flag and, when all the leaders pitted, Busch remained on the track and inherited the lead.

Busch remained there for the final 49 circuits. It required luck but also a stunning ability to seize an opportunity that suddenly materialized. He led 47 of the first 48 laps and the final 49, with nary a one in between. That key moment gave a race that was sparsely attended and had only 10 lead changes a moment by which to remember it.

The perception in the minds of Keselowski, who finished second, and Harvick, who was third, seemed to be that of men who felt they had been cheated by fate as much as Busch.

Terry Renna/Associated Press

Keselowski, who is among NASCAR’s more talkative drivers, answered six questions with a total of 114 words. He often expends that many on one response. According to the official transcript, his remarks included eight sentences and seven fragments. One of the sentences was, “It is what it is,” and another was, “It’s part of the game.”

His most informative remarks? “He’s [Busch] good, but we’re a good team, too. I feel like we can beat him.”

At the very least, seven races before the Chase and 17 from season’s end, the resurgent Kyle Busch has the opposition on its heels if not in outright retreat.

All quotes are taken from NASCAR media, team and manufacturer sources unless otherwise noted.