I notice several articles following the Richmond NASCAR race with the main topic being 'Kyle Busch winning over fans.'
I've always thot that Kyle Busch is an extremely talented driver that is very, very knowledgeable about what it takes to make a stock car handle properly for him to drive. He seems to have a knack for taking the top of the line equipment provided by Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) and working with his crew chief, Steve Addington, to achieve a drivable chassis setup; thus allowing him to use his abilities to navigate traffic to produce successful results in a high percentage of his races.
I can understand his domination in the truck series and old Busch series, much of which is due to the success of his equipment...think about it, even 18 year-old Joey Logano won in JGR equipment there. JGR always insures Kyle has top notch equipment even when driving non-JGR owned vehicles in those two series. With his talent and that equipment, results surely follow.
Given the level of competition in the CUP series, his success there is what's really remarkable. If we look at the other experienced JGR CUP driver, Denny Hamlin, his success has been considerably less than that of Kyle Busch in what is likely comparable equipment. I believe Kyle's knowledge of car setup combined with his driving abilities are what make him successful. He definitely deserves to win the races that he wins, there's no luck involved. It's all hard work on his part.
Personally, while I am a fan of Kyle Busch's driving, I'm not a fan of Kyle Busch. He's entirely too immature and acts like an ass on entirely too many occasions. I can understand his rationale for those actions and I won't be too critical as those traits have historically been fairly common for successful young NASCAR drivers. Many of these same young smart-ass drivers later became icons in the garage.
It's natural for a portion of NASCAR fans to dislike young drivers when they're toooooooooooo successful early in their career. If you recall, Jeff Gordon was, and is still, unliked (make that hated) by many, many CUP racing fans. He won too much, too quick and fans didn't like his seemingly easy success. However, with his lack of recent success, Jeff Gordon today is fast assuming iconic stature in NASCAR. That's being helped by Jimmie Johnson's huge success and fans switching their hatred from Jeff to Jimmie. It's an ongoing process among fans and drivers that's constantly changing.
Most fans disliked the big-mouth Darrel Waltrip in his younger days. Many changed their mind after Rusty Wallace chased him down for a whole bunch of laps and spun him out while he was the leader of the all star race in Charlotte (maybe 1989 or so). Then fans switched much of their hatred to Rusty and gave DW a free ride the rest of his career. DW's acceptance as an announcer today on Fox is a partial result of that fan attitude change. I won't even try to discuss Dale Earnhardt's metamorphosis in the eyes of fans.
Basically, my opinion is that Kyle Busch deserves every bit of his success as a driver and hopefully somewhere down the road he will also deserve adulation from CUP fans for his stature as an adult NASCAR driver.
Just one 'old fart' CUP fan's opinion,
JD
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