Within minutes of Kyle Busch’s highly significant fifth consecutive Texas Motor Speedway Nationwide Series victory Monday evening, team owner Joe Gibbs was entertaining pleas for Busch to attempt the defense of his 2009 series championship. Before this season, Busch and the Joe Gibbs Racing hierarchy — Joe and son and team president J.D. Gibbs — had arranged a schedule of between 25 and 28 Nationwide races for Busch, who would concentrate on his Sprint Cup program with another #18 Toyota. But with the victory in the O’Reilly 300 that was rain-delayed twice, from Saturday to Sunday to Monday, Busch took a 20-point lead over Brad Keselowski in the championship. And the questions for Busch and Joe Gibbs, about reconsidering their title defense, started. Busch, who earlier Monday had made a six-position advance in the Sprint Cup standings when he finished third in the Samsung Mobile 500, broke into a smile, gestured to Gibbs sitting to his left on the dais at the TMS media center and said, “That’s his question.” Gibbs smiled right back and cracked, “I had no more gotten to winner’s circle than about three of the crew guys are going, ‘Hey, can we run for a championship?’ and they were jerking on me. “I think we’ve laid out a plan there and we’ll talk it over with Kyle, but …” “I want to, but it’s up to these guys [gesturing either way, to Gibbs and crew chief Jason Ratcliff, sitting to his right at the post-race media briefing],” Busch said. “I’d like to, but we know how difficult it is to run both and what it takes away from the premium spot, which is the Sprint Cup Series title — and I don’t want to take anything from those guys.(NASCAR.com)(4-20-2010)
