Kyle Busch: Is Your Collar Tight In Turn Two?

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Can you perform in the clutch?  That’s one of sport’s great cliche questions, isn’t it?  

The two-out, walk-off  homerun. The buzzer-beater jumper to win the championship game. Being your best when a special win is on the line.  Michael, Reggie, and Tiger.  You know who they are by their first names only, because they did it on the big stage.  A-Rod and Phil, not so much.

NASCAR’s big stage is the Chase to the Sprint Cup. It is the ten races that every team spends the rest of the year trying to qualify for. But those who do the best during the qualifying races, often fail to perform in the actual Chase.  That’s the subject of the Bench Racing blog’s Tight in Turn Two this week.

Is Kyle Busch choking?

Charlie: The signs are all there, starting with two very poor finishes in the first Chase races. Do you blame that on a broken bolt and a bad motor? Maybe.

But that doesn’t explain the way Rowdy handled the bad start. He pouted and ran away. Contrast that with Matt Kenseth, who has a better resume than Busch—though not a better season so far—and stood up and took the tough questions like the champion he is. 

Kyle acted like a punk. The real telling thing will be, if after a couple more poor races, and his chances of a title are gone, if/whenhe starts winning again. 

See, winning during the regular season is like winning regular PGA golf tournaments. You have to be really good to win one of those. But, it takes a special player to win a Major Championship, like the Masters. The Chase Races are like NASCAR’s Majors —along with the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400. Kyle may not be ready after all.

Bruce:  I had completely expected him to implode in the chase. Earlier in the season, when he didn’t have so many wins under his belt, he tended to get more antsy near the end of a race. I was expecting that from him now.

The mechanical failures pretty much took the driver out of contention to prove my suspicions. Like you Charlie, I see his behavior as less than stellar and after a bad race; I just want to call him a "wahmbulance."

I agree with you again on your second point; when he knows he’s out of it, he’ll relax and do what he does best. I’m a professional bowler, and I can’t tell you how many times someone is mathematically eliminated from winning a match, and then they just relax and bowl the rest of the game really well. We’ll see.

That’s what we think. What do you think? Let us know your opinion in the comment section of this post. 

And head over to Bruce’s NASCAR Bits to let us know what you think of Bruce’s topic too.

Do you think AJ Allmendinger (Dinger to his buddies) will replace Sorenson at Ganassi or does Ganassi have anyone else in mind?

 Phot credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.