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Is Your Collar Tight in Turn Two Kyle?

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by Charlie Turner

Thanks for stopping by OnPitRow.com and the Bench Racing with Steve and Charlie blog. The best NASCAR and IndyCar news and opinion, exclusive pictures and video. I'm Charlie Turner. Follow me on Twitter @onpitrow

September 26, 2008 10:01 am CDT 2 Comments

Can you perform in the clutch?  That’s one of sport’s great cliche questions, isn’t it?  

The two-out, walk-off  homerun.  The buzzer-beater jumper to win the championship game.  Being your best when a special win is on the line.  Michael and Reggie and Tiger.  You know who they are by their first names only, because they did it on the big stage.  A-Rod and Phil, not so much.

NASCAR’s big stage is the Chase to the Sprint Cup.  It is the ten races that every team spends the rest of the year trying to qualify for.  But those who do the best during the qualifying races, often fail to perform in the actual Chase.  That’s the subject of the Bench Racing blog’s Tight in Turn Two this week.

Is Kyle Busch choking?

Charlie:  The signs are all there.  Starting with two very poor finishes in the first Chase races. Do you blame that on a broken bolt and a bad motor?  Maybe.  But that doesn’t explain the way Rowdy handled the bad start.  He pouted and ran away.  Contrast that with Matt Kenseth, who has a better resume than Busch - though not a better season so far - and stood up and took the tough questions like the champion he is.  Kyle acted like a punk.  The real telling thing will be, if after a couple more poor races, and he Kyle totally eliminates his Chase chances, he starts winning again.  See, winning during the regular season is like winning regular PGA golf tournaments. You have to be really good to win one of those too.  But it takes a special player to win a Major Championship, like the Masters.  The Chase Races are like NASCAR’s Majors - along with the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard.  Kyle may not be ready after all.

Bruce:  I had completely expected him to implode in the chase. Earlier in the season when he didn’t have so many wins under his belt, he tended to get more antsy near the end of a race. I was expecting that from him now. The mechanical failures pretty much took the driver out of contention to prove my suspicions. Like you Charlie, I see his behavior as less than stellar and after a bad race, I just want to call him a wah mbulance.

I agree with you again, when he knows he’s out of it, he’ll relax and does what he does best. I’m a professional bowler, and I can’t tell you how many times someone is mathematically eliminated from winning a match, and they just relax and bowl the rest of the game really well.  We’ll see.

That’s what we think.  What do you think?  Let us know your opinion in the comment section of this post. 

And head over to Bruce’s NASCAR Bits to let us know what you think of Bruce’s  topic too.

Do you think AJ Allmendinger (Dinger to his buddies) will replace Sorenson at Ganassi or does Ganassi have anyone else in mind?

 Phot credit: Icon Sports Media, Inc.

Filed under: A J Allmendinger, Chase for the Cup, Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, NASCAR Rumors, Sprint Cup Series, Turn 2 posts 

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Comments

2 Responses to “Is Your Collar Tight in Turn Two Kyle?”

  1. User Avatar Luke on September 26th, 2008 10:18 am

    // Aside: Phil up there is my hero. :D

  2. User Avatar Charlie Turner on October 3rd, 2008 9:19 am

    I like Phil. Certainly more than I “like” Kyle Busch. And, as an example of a ‘choker”, I would have been better to put Greg Norman up. And, “chokers” get a bad rap anyway. They are at least good - or great - enough to conistently put themselves into the position to “choke”.

    All that said, it looks like Kyle’s deal is more a case of the whole team “choking”. I should have put up a picture of the Buffalo Bills.

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