Sprint Cup Series point leader Kyle Busch has decided to abandon any hopes of competing for two NASCAR national touring division championships. He had attempted to challenge for the titles as recently as the last weekend.
Busch’s name is listed on the preliminary entry list for this weekend’s Nationwide Series Milwaukee 250 at The Milwaukee Mile, in a No. 10 Braun Racing Toyota, but a Braun spokesperson said Busch would remain in Sonoma, Calif., for this weekend’s Sprint Cup event and not travel to Milwaukee.
Busch said that he had given up on continuing to race for the Nationwide Series championship, in which he’s competed in the first 16 races. The last two weekends, he went to great lengths to run two races in both Cup and Nationwide in four different states.
“We are so far behind in the Nationwide stuff it’s not worth trying to catch back up,” Busch said of his fifth-place standing, 243 points behind Bowyer. “Clint Boywer is pretty good and such a consistent driver that it’s too hard to catch back up, so we aren’t going to stress ourselves trying to make it.
“We are just going to have fun now and win the races and not stress on getting to where we’ve got to go.”
Busch had never intended to compete for the Craftsman Truck Series drivers’ title, but after the first 10 races in which Busch had run eight times and won twice, the truck is second in the owners’ standings, only eight points behind Johnny Benson’s owner, Bill Davis.
Two weekends ago, Busch flew to Texas on Friday night after qualifying his Sprint Cup car at Pocono and finished second in the Truck race. That Saturday, he crashed his primary Cup car in practice, then flew to Nashville for Nationwide qualifying and a race, in which he finished 20th. On Sunday, he crashed his Cup car and finished last.
Busch started his Michigan weekend by finishing seventh in the Truck Series race on Saturday afternoon, then flew to Kentucky for the Nationwide race, in which he crashed and finished 30th (watch video). He then returned to Michigan, where he finished 13th, extending his lead in the Sprint Cup standings to 32 points over Jeff Burton.