On the surface, Kyle Busch's run to the 2009 Nationwide Series championship may have looked easy, but Busch himself admits that staking his claim on the 2009 champion's trophy was no easy task.
"It wasn't a cake walk this year," Busch said at the Camping World Truck Series/Nationwide Series awards banquet in Miami on Monday.
Sure, he accumulated 5682 points over the course of the 35 races that made up the 2009 campaign -- the most ever earned by any driver in the series in a single season. But even on the strength of a season that included nine wins and 11 second-place finishes, the 2009 Nationwide Series title came down to the last race of the season.
"We went all the way to the last race before we won the championship, Busch said. "Just shows you how hard this is."
His road to his first NASCAR title may not have been easy, but Busch made it look like a breeze. Even though the championship outcome wasn't decided until the final race of the season at Homestead-Miami Speedway about a week and a half ago, Busch did pretty much have his title in the bag prior to the season finale. After all, all he had to do was start the Ford 300 season-closer to stake his claim on the trophy.
"Carl (Edwards) and Brad (Keselowski) both kept it really close," Busch said.
Maybe that depends on a person's perspective. The 2009 Nationwide Series title may have come down to the final event of the year, but Busch ended up claiming his title with a cushion of more than a race worth of points over second-place Edwards.
Busch's season was so dominant that Keselowski's performance that would have been title-worth in past seasons -- with four wins, 22 top-fives, and 28 top-10s -- was only good enough for third.
According to Keselowski, the 2009 season he turned in would have produced a series title in six of the last seven seasons.
Whether or not Busch's title was an easy one to obtain, the 2009 champion contends that he doesn't have plans to defend his title in 2010. His story now is that he's going to scale back his Nationwide schedule to only companion events to focus more on his Sprint Cup Series efforts.
Whether Busch sticks to that plan remains to be seen, but the 2010 Nationwide Series points race may come down once again to a pair of Sprint Cup regulars. But instead of the two drivers being Busch and Edwards, it'll be Edwards and Keselowski. All indications point to Edwards once again competing in both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide series full-time next season, and Keselowski will continue to race in the Nationwide Series full-time in addition to becoming a full-time Sprint Cup Series driver for Penske Racing.
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