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| Sports ExtraWednesday, August 15, 2007 10:52 PM CDT |
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Kyle Busch gives Joe Gibbs Racing powerful 3-car lineup
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. -- Kyle Busch had no shortage of job opportunities when he lost his ride at Hendrick Motorsports. Some offered him tons of money, others offered him a chance to be a No. 1 driver. In the end, only Joe Gibbs Racing offered him an immediate chance to win a Nextel Cup title. JGR teams have won three of the past seven championships. Busch signed with Gibbs on Tuesday, ending a busy 10-week negotiating period that began when Hendrick cast him aside to make room for Dale Earnhardt Jr. “It was an easy decision after looking at all the prospects,” said Busch, who will replace J.J. Yeley in the No. 18 next season. “The Nextel Cup series is filled with good teams and good people, but the moment I saw the shop and began talking with (the team), there was a level of comfort that made me feel like this is where I belong. I want to win races and championships, and Joe Gibbs Racing’s three-car/one-team philosophy gives me the best opportunity to do that.” Busch had an opportunity to win championships at Hendrick, where he’s won four races since joining the Cup series in 2005. But the stubborn and strong-willed 22-year-old driver was never a good fit in Hendrick’s corporate mold, and he was usually the outcast among his polished teammates. He won’t have that problem at JGR, where Gibbs, the Washington Redskins coach, thinks Busch can flourish. “Going through this process, he was real forthright, straightforward,” Gibbs said after Redskins practice. “He’s very smart, and what he said was, ‘I made some mistakes,’ and he said ‘Hopefully, as young as I am I can learn from those mistakes.’ He was real forthright, real squared up, he didn’t do an ego thing. “He was really just, I thought, pretty humble on the stuff that we talked to him about.” Gibbs is conditioned to dealing with difficult people -- his NFL players with the Redskins, and his two current drivers, Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin. Stewart has spent nine years conditioning upper management to accept obnoxious behavior so long as it accompanies success. He’s won two championships and 32 races, but has given the team years of heartburn through his aggression, terrible temper and unfiltered frankness. And Hamlin, in his second season of Cup racing, has proven to be unafraid to hold his ground and refused to back down last month when he tangled with Stewart on track at Daytona. Now Busch will be in the mix, and he’s had his share of run-ins with Stewart in the past. But Gibbs and his son, team president J.D. Gibbs, said Stewart and Hamlin fully supported signing Busch. “We talked at length with Tony,” Gibbs said. “Tony’s had some run-ins with (Busch), but Tony also is real, real smart and is a real, real racer and he understands things and he said, ‘Hey, you need to go get him.’ “And then Denny was really friends with him. They talk a lot, they’re younger, they’re together a lot.” Busch gives the team a talented but temperamental three-car lineup. In a videotaped welcome from Redskins training camp, Gibbs wished his son luck in dealing with the drivers. “We’ve got Tony, and the way Tony acts sometimes ... we found that Denny is no piece of cake, and now we’ve got Kyle Busch?” Gibbs quipped. “J.D., good luck.” Financial terms of the three-year deal were not released, but Gibbs joked he’ll have to coach another 10 years to afford to pay Busch. Jeff Dickerson, who represents Busch through Motorsports Management Inc., said the driver turned down more money from other teams to sign with Gibbs. He also turned down opportunities to be the star of the team, including an offer to take over Earnhardt’s No. 8 car at Dale Earnhardt Inc. “Going to DEI, that was definitely a possibility,” Busch said. “But being the leader of a team ... at 22 years of age, isn’t something I’m ready for,” he said. “It isn’t something I was ready to throw myself into.” Busch was never better than the No. 3 driver at Hendrick, where he was overshadowed by champions Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. And while there is no star system at Gibbs, Stewart is clearly the top driver and showed he doesn’t like sharing the spotlight when he criticized Hamlin following their July run-in at Daytona. J.D. Gibbs said the occasional flare-up is secondary to winning. “You’ve got to win races and you’ve got to go fast,” Gibbs said. “You have to have the chance to win championships. If you don’t do that, if you don’t put yourself in that position ... you won’t be here very long. You have to perform on the track, and clearly Kyle does that as well as Tony as well as Denny. “Tony, for as intense and passionate as he is around the race track, I think a lot of people don’t see him off the track, all the stuff he does, his heart, the way he really cares about other people. I see a lot of that same thing in Kyle. I think he will bond well with our guys.” Busch said past incidents between him and Stewart -- it started with aggressive driving in last year’s Daytona 500 and spilled into the next several weeks -- have long been resolved. “We sat down and talked about it and put it all aside and figured we would be better off as friends than as enemies,” Busch said. “Tony and I think we can get along very well as teammates.” AP Sports Writer Joseph White contributed to this report from Ashburn, Va. E-mail this story | Print this story | Search archives | RSS Show comments |  Hide comments | Hide comments on all stories |
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jj wrote on Aug 15, 2007 8:42 PM:
Tony vs. Kyle vs. Denny wrote on Aug 15, 2007 2:50 PM:
Good!! wrote on Aug 15, 2007 12:08 PM:
Nerds wrote on Aug 15, 2007 12:04 PM:
This kid wrote on Aug 15, 2007 9:53 AM:
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