Kyle Busch Looking to Put the Icing on the Cake

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In: Xfinity Series News

Kyle Busch returns to the seat of the No. 51 ToyotaCare Tundra for Friday night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series finale at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway. Kyle Busch Motorsports’ (KBM) owner-driver will be looking to help the reigning Owner’s Champions put the finishing touches on back-to-back titles and collect the organization’s third trophy in its five-year existence.

Regardless of the outcome of the Owner’s Championship, 2014 has been a banner year for Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM). With Erik Jones win last week at Phoenix (Ariz.) International Raceway, KBM broke the record for most wins in a season by a Truck Series team with 13. The previous mark of 12 was set by Ultra Motorsports in 2001 during a 24-race schedule, compared to this year’s 22-race schedule. Jones’ win last weekend, his third of 2014, was the 10th by the No. 51 ToyotaCare team this season. The team leads the series in wins, laps led (1,041), fastest laps run (645) and enters Friday night’s race with an 18-point lead over the No. 88 team.

 

Busch will be looking to bookend the 2014 season with victories. The Las Vegas native started the season off by collecting his first Truck Series win at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway in February and went on to win in each of his first five starts this season. After a two-race hiatus from victory lane in August, Rowdy notched a victory at Chicagoland (Ill.) Speedway in September and followed it up with a Texas Motor Speedway triumph in his last series start two weeks ago to give him seven on the season. For the fifth time in the last six years (2009-2011, 2013-2014), he will lead the series in wins and if he can beat the field to the stripe on Friday night he will match his single-season mark of eight Truck Series wins he set when he ran a 16-race schedule in 2010.

 

The No. 51 team had fallen all the way back to fourth in the championship standings, 20 points out of the lead, in late August after Busch was relegated to a 24th-place finish when he suffered a flat tire late in the race at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway. In the eight races since Bristol, the team has won four times – two apiece from Busch and Jones – and its worst finish was a seventh-place result in September at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon.

 

With a Manufacturer’s Championship clinched for Toyota, a single-season wins record by his organization already in hand and claiming victories in seven of his nine starts behind the wheel himself, 2014 has been an extremely successful season for Kyle Busch in the Truck Series.  Now, KBM’s owner-driver will set his sights on putting the icing on the cake with another Truck Series Owner’s Championship and you know he’d like to do it the same way he did in both 2010 and 2013 — a dual celebration in victory lane.

 

KBM PR

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