Kyle Busch's Drive for 25

Kyle Busch may be out of contention for the Sprint Cup, but he certainly hasn't lost his drive.

"Rowdy" Busch still has his eyes on a few more prizes. In particular, he wants 25 wins.

Busch already has 20 wins in NASCAR’s top three series in 2008, those coming in his 71 (yes, 71) starts so far this year. That works out to about one win in every 3.5 starts. 

Busch has eight Sprint Cup victories in 31 starts, nine Nationwide Series wins in 27 starts, and three trips to victory lane in the Craftsman Truck Series in only 13 starts. 

And that doesn't count all the late model and other races he dashes off to in his "spare time," at least a couple of which he has won.

Given that the season still has five more Sprint Cup races, four more Nationwide races, and five more Craftsman Truck races, there is no reason to believe he can't do it.

"It’s any driver’s dream to be able to win like we have this year. We just didn’t know how things would go this year with a new team at Joe Gibbs Racing, M&M’s, Toyota, everyone, and it certainly exceeded my expectations. 

"To win 20 races is crazy to think about, but there’s still plenty of racing left to go and I would love to get to 25 total, and a few more wins with the M&M’s guys before the year is over. That will be the goal, anyway."

He'll go for win No. 21 in Saturday’s truck race at Martinsville Speedway, returning Sunday for the Tums QuikPak 500 Cup race. 

While he has had the same crew chief, team, and car owner for his 31 Sprint Cup starts (Steve Addington, No. 18, Joe Gibbs Racing) and his 13 Craftsman Truck Series starts (Richie Wauters, No. 51, Billy Balew Motorsports), the same cannot be said of the series in which he has his most wins.

In his 27 Nationwide Series starts, Busch has worked with eight different crew chiefs (Dave Rogers, Jason Ratcliff, Trent Owens, Todd Lohse, Doug Hewitt, Mike Sibley, and Joel Weidmann) on four different teams (No. 18, No. 20, No. 32, No. 92) for three different car owners (JGR, Braun Motorsports, D'Hondt Motorsports).

The only constant in them all is Busch himself. 

Even if he doesn't reach his goal of 25 wins, this has already been yet another year of records for the 23-year-old from Las Vegas.

His 20 wins so far crushes the previous record for wins across multiple series of 14, set by Kevin Harvick in 2006. 

Moreover, he has won at least one race in each series four years in a row, from 2005-2008. 

Only two other drivers have won in all three series and each of them only did it once, and each of them ended up with a total of only five wins—Terry Labonte in 1995, and Kevin Harvick in 2003. 

If Busch can reach 10 Cup victories, he will be the fourth driver in the past 16 years to win at least 10 races in a season, joining Jimmie Johnson (2007), Jeff Gordon (1996-98) and Rusty Wallace (1993).

And if he can win one more Nationwide Series race, he will tie Sam Ard's record of 10 wins in the series set back in 1983, two years before Busch was born. If he wins two, he will break it. 

Considering he has won the last two Nationwide races he entered in the Joe Gibbs No. 18 car in dominating fashion, it is not only possible but likely that he will win at least one more.

Currently, he has the most wins in both the Cup and the Nationwide Series, and with only four races to go no one can equal him in the latter.

The only driver who could, Tony Stewart with his five victories, is not scheduled to run any more races in that series this year.

If he manages to hang on to the most wins in the Cup, he will be the first driver to finish a season with the most wins in two different series in the same year.

One thing that some claim may hurt him is that Martinsville is a short track, and none of Busch’s Cup wins this year has come on a short track. His record there has been spotty, and he finished 38th there in the Sprint.

But he did win the truck race at Bristol earlier this year, and was well on his way to a top-three finish at Martinsville when he got into Johnny Benson during one of his late-race charges and sent them both spinning.

And we need only go back to last year to find another monumental short-track win of his—Busch won the first-ever "Car of Tomorrow" race at Bristol in 2007.

Besides, Busch never had a road course victory before this year, yet he managed to sweep the two Cup road courses and win one of the two Nationwide road course races (Mexico City) he started this year. 

And he came close to sweeping all four such events he entered, as he finished second in the Nationwide Race at Watkins Glen.

Before this year, Busch had never won a Cup race at a restrictor-plate track either. He had been close and in the hunt many times, including his loss by 0.005 seconds to Jamie McMurray in the 2007 Pepsi 400 at Daytona. 

Earlier that day, he had won a rain-delayed Busch Series race there at Daytona, nearly becoming the first driver to ever win races in two major NASCAR series on the same day.

Of the tracks remaining, Busch has won in both the truck and Cup series at Atlanta (on the same weekend, by the way), in the Nationwide series at Texas, and in all three series at Phoenix.

He has top-five finishes at both Martinsville and Homestead in all three series as well.

If he can win one race per weekend, he will reach his goal. Given his winning percentage this year, that is by no means impossible.

Can he do it? Seeing as he no longer has a "need" to focus on winning the Sprint Cup championship anymore, Busch is now free to go back to spreading his focus across two and three races per weekend, as he did earlier in the year.

Now there is nothing to hold him back from setting his sights on getting his desired 25 wins, along with all the other records that will go with doing so.

The year 2008 may not go down as the season Busch won his first Cup Championship as many had expected and hoped, but it will go into the record books as a season to be remembered for many years, if not decades, to come.