Mistakes, I've made a few

At the beginning of the season, I told myself that as a rookie driver, I was going to make some mistakes. I sure haven't fallen short on that prediction.

I'm just lucky to have a veteran team behind me that catches me when I stumble and helps me get back on my feet. That has happened a couple of times lately, and I don't know where I'd be if I didn't have my crew to keep me straight.

Some of you might have read about what happened to us at Dover, where I hit another car when I was leaving my pit stall and damaged the fender on my car. I came back into the pits, and the team fixed me up. We had some other problems that ended up knocking us back as far as 32nd position, but thanks to my team never giving up, we came back and finished fifth.

My biggest mistake so far this season ended up being one of the highlights of my year, believe it or not. We were real fast at Kentucky Speedway in practice and ended up qualifying second for the Busch Series race there in June. The car was awesome. During final practice, I had just finished making a bunch of laps and was taking the car to the garage. I cut the motor off and started to duck down on to the apron of the track to get out of the way of some cars behind me.

I was still going too fast when my tires got down on the apron, and I ended up spinning the car and hitting the wall. The car was pretty much finished, and we had to go to a backup car and start from the rear of the field. I was ticked off at myself for wrecking the car because it was completely unnecessary. All I had to do was slow down more, and everything would have been fine. It was a rookie mistake, for sure. Fortunately, everything turned out OK when we ended up taking the backup car to victory lane on Saturday night.

I wasn't so lucky at a race in Milwaukee. I used up the tires during a spin in qualifying, and I had to start the race on the old tires. I ended up going two laps down and finishing 16th. I know it could've been worse, but we lost ground in the points race.

While I've definitely had some missteps, I'm still very happy with how we've performed this season. The fact that we're in the points chase at all says a lot about how well the team has jelled and about how well my crew chief, Lance McGrew, and I are communicating. We've had some tough breaks, but we've also had a lot of things go our way. We've just got to keep our eye on the prize and stay focused on the big picture, which is staying within reach of the points lead.

This sport is definitely a roller-coaster ride, but there's one thing I can say--the ride is never dull.

E-mail Busch Series driver Kyle Busch at racing@sportingnews.com.

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