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Kyle Busch: From Zero Victories To A Title Threat

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Kyle Busch and crew chief Steve Addington have shown glimpses of dominating Sprint Cup racing this season.

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By TONY FABRIZIO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 20, 2008

Steve Addington was incredulous. His driver, Kyle Busch, hadn't won in three weeks and people were making an issue of it.

In one of those weeks, there wasn't even a race.

"We don't win for three or four weeks and we're in a slump?" Addington said.

That was after Busch ended his so-called drought Aug. 10 at Watkins Glen with his eighth Sprint Cup victory of the season. He finished second Sunday at Michigan for his 14th top-five finish in 23 races.

Addington knows what a slump looks like. After a long and successful tenure as a Nationwide Series crew chief, he went three seasons without a victory at the Sprint Cup level with drivers Bobby Labonte and J.J. Yeley in the No. 18 car.

The other drivers at Joe Gibbs Racing - Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin - were winning races with their crew chiefs, Greg Zipadelli and Mike Ford. They were getting the same resources and equipment as Addington and his drivers.

"Yeah, you start doubting yourself," Addington said recently. "But you go back and realize you've got great teammates and you're sharing the information, so you know you're not doing anything off the wall that should be on your shoulders."

Enter Busch, who was hired to drive the same No. 18 car - although it's a Toyota now rather than a Chevrolet - that Labonte and Yeley went 0-for-108 in from 2005 to 2007. Nobody figured success for the talented but sometimes self-destructive Busch was a sure thing. He would need a crew chief who could curtail his impatience and accept his impertinence.

Addington and Busch have gotten along famously so far. Busch led the most laps in the season-opening Daytona 500 only to finish fourth, and he has won more than a third of the races since.

"I don't know and I don't care why it has clicked," Busch said. "For whatever reason, it has, and that's all that matters."

Long Road To Success

Addington is 44, so his success at stock-car racing's top level has been long coming. His path began in Spartanburg, S.C., where he worked at a machine shop and built dirt-track race cars on the side.

Working with a limited budget, Addington built cars for driver Steve "Hot Rod" LaMance, who regularly got the better of a local hotshot named Jason Keller.

Keller, who was still in high school and driving cars fielded by his father, Joe, recognized Addington's talent and eventually hired him. When the Kellers moved up to the All-Pro Series and then the Nationwide Series, Addington went as Jason's crew chief.

Their relationship had hiccups: Jason Keller fired Addington after the 1997 season.

"Steve and I are like brothers, though," Keller said. "We would fight like brothers, and we would be the best of friends. We'd gotten into it one time and I was under pressure from sponsors, so I actually fired Steve and had another guy come in the last year I owned the race team.

"When I went and started driving for ppc Racing, I begged him to come back. He came back, and we won a lot of races together."

They not only won races together, they also challenged for championships. Keller, with Addington as his pit boss, finished second to Jeff Green for the Busch title in 2000 and second to Greg Biffle in 2002.

Addington was hired by Gibbs in 2004 to lead the company's No. 20 Nationwide team. He got along so well with the team's two Cup-level crew chiefs at the time, Zipadelli and Jimmy Makar, they recommended him to take over as crew chief of the No. 18 car.

Labonte blames bad timing for why he and Addington didn't fare better in 2005.

"That was his first go-around at it, being a crew chief on a Cup car, and I was probably at, not my worst time, but my downfall at Gibbs as far as wondering what was going to happen," he said. "We just never could get it to flow."

With Yeley, Addington never had much of a chance. The former USAC star never made a successful transition to the heavier, full-bodied stock cars.

"J.J. is a great guy; I love him and I think he's an awesome person," Addington said. "The chemistry was just never working right with the whole team like it is right now with Kyle."

A Perfect Complement

With Busch, Addington finally has a young, hungry driver who is at the top of his game. And from Busch's perspective, he has a crew chief who is the perfect complement for his sometimes prickly personality.

"He has the ability to stay calm and roll things off his shoulders a little bit better," Busch said of Addington. "I can criticize and yell and scream and do whatever I want to do, and he'll blow it off and just work on the car."

Said Addington, "Kyle is a very competitive person; he wants to win every time he gets in a race car. Sometimes he'll get excited with his crew. Sometimes he'll get on me. I'm like, 'Dude, as long as you know we're trying, I can take it.'"

And a three-week losing streak doesn't seem bad at all.

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