When the NASCAR season began 10 months ago, one major storyline was Dale Earnhardt Jr. vs. Kyle Busch, after Rick Hendrick's decision to drop Busch to make room for Earnhardt on his four-team roster.
So how have the two fared in a transitional season? In the Chase, they're no-shows: Busch is 10th in the standings, 428 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson, and just a single point ahead of Earnhardt.
In the regular season, Busch had it all over Earnhardt.
And Busch's Nationwide win last weekend at Texas Motor Speedway was his 21st national NASCAR win of the season: eight in Sprint Cup, 10 in Nationwide, three in Trucks. Busch is entered in all three races at Phoenix this weekend and could stretch that total 24. He's won the past two Nationwide races here, and he won the Truck race at PIR last fall. If he were in the Chase, this would be a "closer"
track for him.
Next, a few days after next week's Homestead finale, Busch will fly to Japan to test a Formula One car. Probably just for fun, but you can't never tell … and he's only 23.
■ Earnhardt has seemed flat this fall, and a gas-mileage-doomed 20th-place finish at Texas didn't perk him up. He made the Chase but hasn't done much at all.
Just what's going on in his head at the moment is unclear. He has spent much of the year trying to become a Hendrick company man, and he has changed his image … but that may also have changed his game plan on the track.
"It's been a busy season, it's been flattering and humbling,"
Earnhardt said. "A lot of good things have happened, a lot of neat stuff happened to me."
"Being with Hendrick, that was flattering to me."
"There were a lot of little pats on the back and compliments that were pretty cool. You get appreciated for when you do good, you get recognized for it. And you get help when you do bad. You get people trying to remedy why that happened, try to help keep that from happening again."
■ Busch was a headliner all season, until two mechanical problems the first week of the Chase took him down a notch. Still, he clearly has overachieved.
"We've exceeded our goals,"
he said. "Our goals were to get a win, first, and then a couple wins, and then solidify ourselves as contenders and get into the Chase and compete for the championship."
"We didn't get a shot to compete for the championship, which is too bad. But there were plenty of highlights -- sweeping the road courses, winning the first race at Atlanta, and winning all the races I've won this year."
"We were OK in the spring race here, but we weren't running where we wanted to be. We've been working extremely hard on our flat-track program, because that's something we'll need to improve on next year."
to have a shot at the championship. We had trouble at both New Hampshire and Pocono.
"We're not as good as we were in the beginning of the year. Our cars haven't changed much, but we haven't gotten any better. Everybody else has just caught up that much…."
"It's just phenomenal the way this year has gone. Pretty special times for us. Hopefully it will continue next year too."
