Kyle Busch hit the wall and knocked the rear end of his Toyota out of kilter during the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
“It just made me so loose I just babied it around the bottom of the race track all day,” Busch said. “I just had to make sure to hit my marks and run smooth and slow right around the bottom.”
He held the steering wheel so tightly Sunday that, 45 minutes after the race, he still could barely make a fist. He said it felt like he’d broken his pinkie because of how he holds the wheel and how hard it was to turn his car.
“It was a challenge,” he said. “That’s the worst I’ve ever felt in a race car.”
By the way, did we mention Busch won?
In a race that was as much about coping with difficult conditions as it was about competing against the likes of Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Carl Edwards, Busch emerged with his fifth Sprint Cup victory and made history.
He gave Toyota its first Cup victory in the manufacturer’s 40th race, taking a foreign nameplate to a win in NASCAR’s top series for the second time ever. Al Keller won in a Jaguar in Linden, N.J., on June 13, 1954.
At 22, he also supplanted Jeff Gordon, who was 23 on March 12, 1995, as the youngest Cup driver to win at this 1.54-mile track, and became the first to win a Truck Series race and a Cup race on the same weekend.
Busch said all the racing he did at Atlanta helped him learn how to deal with a tire combination that threw even some who ran well Sunday into conniptions.
“That was the most pathetic racing tire that I’ve ever been on in my professional career,” Stewart said. “If I were Goodyear I would be really embarrassed about this weekend and what they brought here.”
Earnhardt Jr. led 58 of the first 59 laps, and Clint Bowyer enjoyed 52 laps in front during the middle portion of the race. But the only driver who really looked like he might have what it took to beat Busch was Edwards, who was trying for a third straight Cup victory.
Edwards was, in fact, leading when his car started smoking badly and then went out with an engine problem on Lap 275. He finished 42nd.
Busch wasn’t in love with the tires and the way they made his car drive, especially after he slapped the wall early.
“But we all had the same tire,” said Busch, who led 173 of 325 laps. “I just drove the thing to the best of my ability.”
Busch’s considerable driving abilities are the talk of NASCAR.
“It is fun to watch him,” Stewart said. “He will drive the car far beyond what it’s capable of.”
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“I’m just doing my deal,” said Busch, who leads the standings by 73 points over Greg Biffle. He also leads the Truck Series standings and is third in the Nationwide Series points. “Everybody has always said I’ve been an aggressive driver, that I used to cause wrecks, be out of control, this and that. I don’t feel I am driving any differently that I used to. I’ve sort of tamed my style. Now it looks like I am a professional or something.
“But, you know, it seems to be working.”