Four Wide: Busch itching for weekend sweep

BRISTOL, Tenn. – When Kyle Busch crossed the finish line first in Wednesday night's Truck Series race, followed by an exciting win Friday night for his 10th Nationwide series win, he put himself in position for a trifecta at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Busch has a shot at sweeping all three of NASCAR's national series races this week, which will finish with an attempt to defend last year's Sprint Cup Series victory on Saturday night. If he can pull it off, it will be vindication for last season, when he only won two of three races. Chase Austin made a bizarre mistake in last season's Nationwide race when he was a lap down and inexplicably drove into Busch moments after Busch had taken the lead.

After his truck win Wednesday, Busch liked his chances of winning everything at Bristol.

"I was very close last year," he said. "I won the Truck race, didn't win the Nationwide race, got wrecked there, then won the Cup race. So I don't see why not. I love racing here and Bristol is always so much fun."

Busch, like his older brother, Kurt, has always been good at Bristol. He has three career Cup victories on the bullring, now he has two Nationwide wins and three consecutive wins in the Truck Series. But he was off a bit at Bristol in the spring – as was all of Joe Gibbs Racing – and has some work to do in his Cup car as he closes in on a return appearance in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

Despite five victories last season, Busch missed the 12-driver Chase field even after the Bristol win gave him a much-needed boost down the final stretch. He's solidly in this season – Busch goes into Saturday night's race ranked eighth in the points standings – but he's been in a bit of a slump of late. He has just two top-10 finishes in his last nine Cup races and hasn't finished higher than eighth since he was the runner-up at Pocono in June.

With two Cup victories this season, Busch wants more wins for seeding purposes, but he also wants to get his No. 18 Toyota some momentum before the Chase begins next month.

"We feel like we've had some bad weeks here in recent weeks," he said. "We need to try to put that away and get our cars going a little bit better here and try to make sure to find another car that we know can run well. If we can get a couple of wins before the Chase starts, that will help our seeding. But, overall if we don't, we'll probably be tied for fourth or fifth or something like that. Then we'll have to work our way back up toward the top."

Busch has been critical of his fleet of Camrys of late, indicating he doesn't think his crew has enough good cars ready for the Chase. It's never good when Busch is openly questioning his equipment or crew, and he showed in 2008 that when he gets down, it doesn't take long to knock him out.

He needs to turn it up to get his mind right for a championship run, and a sweep could very well do the trick.

What to watch for at Bristol this weekend:

1. Time to play the Feud:

For a long time, the Saturday night at Bristol was the traditional place for tempers to boil over and scores to be settled. That changed with the inception of the Chase in 2004, and drivers had to take a bit of a passive aggressive attitude at the track or risk ruining their shot at a championship.

The repaving of the track in 2007 didn't help either because it created two grooves, opening up "Thunder Valley" to make it wide enough that drivers could pass without having to knock the car in front of them out of the way.

But this season has had an edge about it from start to finish, and drivers have tangled both on and off the track. That leaves the door open for some old fashioned rubbin' and racin' this weekend and there's no shortage of candidates.

Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski have tangled all season, and Bristol is a place where either can subtly send yet another message to the other. Same goes for Ryan Newman and Joey Logano, who seemed to have unfinished business following last weekend's post-race showdown in Michigan. The two argued over contact in Sunday's race that caused Newman to spin, and they exchanged heated words about the incident.

"Learn how to drive!" Newman told the younger driver.

"You're not giving me an inch," countered Logano, referencing how hard Newman makes it to pass him on the track.

When a NASCAR official stepped in to break it up, Newman explained, "I'm just trying to teach the little kid how to drive"

Saturday night could be ripe for some retaliation between those two, or, frankly, anyone else. In June, Martin Truex Jr. promised payback of Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch have had their issues, and Logano also tangled with Kevin Harvick.

Anything can happen with those long memories. After all, Bristol is the place where squeaky-clean Johnson once flipped Robby Gordon the bird.

2. Speaking of Johnson:

It's time for the four-time defending series champion to get rolling again or risk letting current points leader Kevin Harvick roll into the Chase with all the momentum.

Johnson traditionally slides during July and parts of August, only to turn it up come Chase time. This year has been no different, and Johnson has just one top-10 finish since his back-to-back wins at Sonoma and New Hampshire in June.

There's no telling what the issue has been of late with Johnson. It could very well be that with five victories this season – enough to put him in a tie with Denny Hamlin as the top seed in the Chase – crew chief Chad Knaus is toying with different set ups to see what might work when it counts. But, it's also possible that Johnson, and all of Hendrick Motorsports, just isn't clicking on all cylinders right now. If that's the case, then the No. 48 team needs to find what they're missing over the next three weeks.

Bristol had never been a great track for Johnson, but he turned it around in March with his first career victory there and has confidence that he can be a repeat winner after several years of frustration.

"We look forward to being competitive and hopefully going back to victory lane," he said. "From our standpoint, not just this year but others as well, we felt the consistency going into the Chase was really important. We've had some races in the last four or five weeks where we've been competitive and didn't finish well. … I think we're looking more for a consistent run here leading into New Hampshire before we start the Chase."

3. Will it be a sellout?

Attendance has been down everywhere this season, but Bristol is the one place that seemed to be immune to the economic crunch. However, Bristol's string of 55 consecutive sellouts came to a crashing halt in March when a sparse crowd sat through a gray day at a track that had consistently been one of the toughest tickets in racing. The writing had been on the wall: Bristol officials last year put fall race tickets up for sale to the general public for the first time in at least two decades.

This year, for the first time in nearly as long, fans could purchase single-event tickets to Saturday night's race. And, if you follow any drivers on Twitter, you probably noticed a recent giveaway by many of them who had pairs of tickets to give to fans.

Part of the problem is Bristol's expansion from 30,000 seats, when the sellout streak started in 1982, to the present-day capacity of 160,000 has finally reached its limits on supply and demand. That coupled with the fact that hotel prices within at least a 50-mile radius are among the highest in the series, and fans simply can't afford a weekend at Bristol anymore.

It will be interesting to see how many people show up Saturday night, and it will certainly be sad if Bristol, one of the most special tracks in NASCAR, has a disappointing crowd for one of the most exciting races of the season.

4. It would be nice if Elliott Sadler had a good weekend:

Like Kyle Busch, Sadler is also pulling triple duty this weekend at one of his favorite race tracks. Sadler notched his first career Cup win at Bristol in an exciting, emotional 2001 victory driving for the Wood Brothers. It launched his career, so to speak, and he moved on to bigger rides with Robert Yates Racing followed by Evernham Motorsports.

Now with Richard Petty Motorsports, the team born after two mergers involving Evernham's original group, Sadler longs for the days of that innocent Bristol victory. He's 29th in the points right now and appears to be on his way out at RPM, which has announced in the last few weeks a contract extension for AJ Allmendinger and a new deal with Marcos Ambrose. The signing of Ambrose included giving the new RPM driver Stanley, which has been Sadler's sponsor this year.

Offering no comment on Sadler's future with the team in any of these announcements most certainly means he's got to line up something else for next year.

Sadler still has something left, proven by his Truck Series win at Pocono for Kevin Harvick Inc. But he's got to show some consistency to get an owner of a competitive team to bite, and maybe Bristol could be his shot.