Jeff Owens
Special to FOXSports.com
Posted: 10 hours ago


Nextel Cup teams got a scare on Sunday, one that has to leave many of the sport's top drivers and teams a bit worried about the immediate future.

After Kyle Busch's victory at Bristol, it is clear that Hendrick Motorsports now has three drivers and three teams capable of winning consistently and contending for the Nextel Cup championship.
By winning the season's fifth race, Busch continues to prove that he is capable of joining teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson among NASCAR's elite drivers.

His win at Bristol gave Hendrick three wins in the first five races this season. Johnson has two and seems poised to try and defend his Nextel Cup title. And Gordon, who struggled a bit in recent years, appears to be back, leading the point standings after five races.

Now, Busch is joining them, perhaps giving Hendrick three legitimate championship contenders and once again making Hendrick Motorsports NASCAR's elite team. (Who else has three drivers winning races these days?)

It's not that the younger of the two Busch brothers - Kyle is still just 21 - suddenly burst onto the scene. He won twice as a rookie in 2005, won another race last year and made last season's Chase For The Nextel Cup.

But a more experienced, more mature Busch is clearly stepping up and appears on the verge of breaking out in a big way.

Prior to Sunday's win, Busch had run at the front and been in contention in each of the season's first four races. He scored top-10 finishes at California and Las Vegas, but had problems at both Daytona and Atlanta.

He entered the Bristol race 14th in points, but had shown signs of much bigger things.

It finally happened at Bristol, where he ran near the front throughout the race, and then won a stirring duel with Denny Hamlin, Jeff Burton and Gordon.

He won on one of NASCAR's toughest tracks and in one of its most bizarre races.

That he won NASCAR's first car of tomorrow race is significant, and not just historically. The Food City 500 wasn't supposed to be won by a 21-year-old driver still trying to make his way in NASCAR's top series.

Run with a car Nextel Cup teams had never raced competitively before, it was supposed to be dominated by NASCAR's top drivers and most experienced teams. And for a while it was, with Tony Stewart running away from the field before suffering mechanical problems.

But Busch and crew chief Alan Gustafson kept their team in the hunt throughout the race and were ready to pounce when Stewart and Hamlin had problems. And they did it despite the fact that Busch hated driving the car of tomorrow.

In the end, Busch won a tough, challenging race with a car he was not comfortable driving. And he did it on arguably NASCAR's toughest track. That speaks volumes about his driving talent and his team's ability to step up in difficult circumstances.

In a way, it may have signaled that Kyle Busch, the younger brother of Kurt, the 2004 Cup champion, has finally arrived.

When Gordon won his first two Cup races in 1994 at age 23, he won at Charlotte and Indy, both big superspeedways. A year later, his first two wins of the 1995 season came at Rockingham and Atlanta.

But it wasn't until he won at Bristol for the first time that spring that everyone realized that Gordon was a special talent.

Likewise, Johnson scored his first Cup win at California Speedway in 2002. But when he swept both races at Dover, a track similar to Bristol, later that year, it sent a message that he was going to be a force to be reckoned with.

Busch's win at Bristol may have just sent the same message. His first three Cup wins came at California, Phoenix and New Hampshire, not easy tracks, but not among NASCAR's toughest, either.

The Bristol win showed he can conquer one of NASCAR's toughest tracks and do it by meeting a difficult challenge with the car of tomorrow.

If Busch can win under those circumstances, many more wins are likely on the way. And that does not bode well for the competition, nor anti-Hendrick fans.

Jeff Owens is a writer for NASCAR Scene, which is published weekly, 50 weeks per year.

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