By Brian T. Smith
Assistant Sports Editor / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: August 22, 2008

Transcript of an e-mail interview conducted with Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 18 M&M’s Toyota Camry, and current points leader in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Q: Think back to when you were a kid. What would you have thought of possibly being able to have a season like you’ve had so far.

A: It’s fun.  I said from the beginning of the year that we just wanted to keep riding and keep going in the way that we have been, and fortunately we’ve been able to do that.  Yeah, there’s been a couple weeks where, yeah, you might fall back a little bit.  But you look at Pocono and we were running fourth before we ran out of gas.  Whether we didn’t get it full on that last stop or whatever, it was unfortunate there.  And then at Indy, we were running in the top 10 much of the day, top five, we led some, and probably had probably a fifth through tenth place car, and that’s where we were going to end up coming out of that final pit stop but my guys got run over and launched underneath the car by the 88 so we just had to wait for them to get back out.  We missed our shot there at a Top 10.  You’ve got to keep it going in the right direction, you’ve got to look at what you can do and what you’ve been able to do and just try to keep doing it.
It’s been a great year and we could never really ask for more, but you hope that the success can continue and you can hope that you can have a shot for the championship when it’s all said and done.

Q: What’s your opinion of racing at Bristol?

A: I think years ago it was just a race where everybody could go balls out, and now it’s sort of tamed it a little bit.  With the track being a three-groove race track there’s a lot more room that everybody can drive around it so it’s kind of cooled off a little bit in that sense, too.

Q: What’s made Toyota so successful this year?

A: It’s great that we’ve had the success that we’ve had this year being in a Toyota but any other manufacturer would hope that they’d be able to run just as strong.  With the affiliation that we have at Joe Gibbs Racing with the Toyota brand is something that NASCAR has brought into the sport that we’ve been able to use to our advantage and win some races with.

Q: There are still a lot of races to go this year, as well as the Chase. What would you like to accomplish during the remainder of the season?

We’re setting up for the Chase.  We were setting up for the Chase from Daytona.  I’m just kidding.  It’s just crazy the way everything has kind of come along this year, but we were fortunate it’s come along on us.  We’ve just been fortunate to run as well as we have at places and yet we’ve struggled at a couple others.  We’ve got some work to do.  I heard earlier today that the 48 (Jimmie Johnson) has been testing like 18 times this year and stuff, and we’ve tested a couple places but nothing like that.  So we’re looking forward to the next couple weeks.  We’ve got some tests lined up and we’re going to try to learn something and keep our mojo going and keep it going through and into the Chase.