Associated Press
LOUDON, N.H. ó It took Kyle Busch 26 races to build a points lead and a psychological edge ó and just 20 laps in the opening race of NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup championship to see it all disappear.
The driver Cup fans love to hate has been the scourge of the stock car sport this season, winning a series-high eight races during the “regular season” in Cup, adding seven more wins in the second-tier Nationwide Series and three in the truck circuit.
The 23-year-old wunderkind had led the Cup standings since the 10th race.
All of that added up to the expectation that Busch would be the guy to beat for this year’s championship.
But a broken part in his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota turned Sunday’s Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway into a near-disaster for Busch, who was so upset he left the track without speaking to the media.
It was only thanks to some late attrition in the race that Busch didn’t wind up worse than his 34th-place finish in the 43-car field. He fell to eighth in the standings, 74 points behind co-leaders Carl Edwards and Jimmie Johnson.
For the start of the 10-race Chase, the 12 eligible drivers were seeded by wins, with a 10-point bonus for each victory. The hopeful Busch began the day 30 points ahead of Edwards, 40 in front of two-time reigning Cup champion Johnson and 80 ahead of the four Chase drivers who have not won this year.
Everything seemed to be going his way this week, too, when despite struggling with an ill-handling car in practice, qualifying was rained out and the drivers were lined up by points ó putting Busch on the pole.
But it was obvious from moments after the green flag waved that something was wrong.
After leading the first three laps of the race, Busch slid back through the field and smoke curled from the rear of his car as he drove through the turns. On lap 20, the rear end swung out and clipped the wall as he drove through turn two on the 1.058-mile oval.
Busch continued, but things just got worse after that.
The radio chatter between Busch and his pit began referring to the possibility of a broken sway bar and, on his first pit stop, those fears were confirmed: a broken bolt on the front sway bar was allowing the rear of the car to slide dangerously in the turns.
Busch, penalized for passing the pace car to get into the pits on that first stop, was held on pit road for a lap. He and new crew chief Steve Addington still had hopes of getting the problem corrected and making up that lost lap until Busch spun on lap 83.
Again Busch continued but, this time, he came out of the pits eight laps behind the leaders and was so slow that he was lapped four more times before the end of the race.
“We had a part failure and it’s one of those things you can’t do nothing about,” Addington said. “We weren’t very good when we unloaded here, but we felt like we did the right things and were going to have a good race car. (That) part failure cost us, so we’ll just have to go back and re-evaluate.”