By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
(July 9, 2011)
SPARTA, Ky.—If you called Kyle Busch a glutton for racing action, you’d be right.
It’s not enough that Busch is running races in each of NASCAR’s three touring series this weekend at Kentucky Speedway. On Sunday, he’ll make his annual pilgrimage to Slinger Speedway in Wisconsin to compete in the Slinger Nationals Super Late Model event.
Winning that race, one of the crown jewels of Super Late Model competition, is something that has been on Busch’s bucket list for years.
He’ll race at Slinger after a grueling four-day session at Kentucky Speedway, where the long weekend started on Wednesday with two hours of Camping World Truck Series practice at the 1.5-mile track. Thursday brought nearly six hours of Sprint Cup practice, along with 75 minutes of Nationwide Series practice, truck series qualifying and a truck race.
Busch won the truck race after starting from the rear because he missed the drivers’ meeting—thanks to a Cup practice session that ran right up to the drivers’ meeting start time.
On Friday, the schedule called for more Cup practice, Nationwide and Cup qualifying (the latter washed out by a pop-up shower) and a Nationwide race, in which Busch started from the rear (having wrecked during qualifying) and finished third.
Saturday was a light day. The only racing on tap was a 267-lap Cup race.
Busch figured he would log more racetrack miles over the weekend than ever before in his career.
“Lap-count-wise, we probably run more laps at Bristol, but mileage-wise, it’s probably more miles here, for sure,” Busch told Sporting News on Friday.
That won’t deter him from his trip to Wisconsin.
“It definitely wears on you a little bit, but, yeah, I’m going to Slinger on Sunday,” Busch said.
Traffic jam snares Hamlin en route to Kentucky Speedway
Driver Denny Hamlin’s whereabouts were no mystery early Saturday afternoon—he was stuck on the interstate with thousands of race fans heading for Kentucky Speedway.
Sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic gave Hamlin a chance to tweet the latest version of good news/bad news.
“Bad news is I’m prolly not going to make the drivers meeting in 3 hours because I’m in this traffic with everyone else,” Hamlin posted on his Twitter account at around 2:30 p.m. ET.
“Good news, I’m starting in the back anyway.”
The penalty for missing the drivers’ meeting is starting from the rear of the field, but Hamlin already was headed to the back because of an engine change on Friday.
To a fan who criticized him for tweeting while driving, Hamlin replied, “Not driving, sitting.”
Despite the dire prediction, Hamlin made it to the racetrack well in advance of the drivers’ meeting.
Not exactly garage majal
Track owner Bruton Smith acknowledged the garage area at the 1.5-mile track isn’t quite up to his usual standards of luxury, but that could change.
In fact, Smith would like Kentucky native son Darrell Waltrip, who was instrumental in bringing big-track NASCAR racing to the Bluegrass State, to play a part in the renovation—indirectly.
“Now, please forgive us,” Smith said. “You are in a garage area like no other in the world. My desire is to tear all this down, and I’m going to take all these parts and pieces over to Darrell’s house and leave them there.
“We’ll get around to that (rebuilding the garage). I guess I should apologize for this garage area, but I would not know where to start—but it’s different.”
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