June 8, 2008
By Kim Roberson
Kim Roberson
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Love him, hate him, or just deal with him, you have to look at what Kyle Busch is doing this weekend and give him credit for really
enjoying his job.
Kyle is trying to become the first driver in NASCAR to race in all three of the sports top series…in three different cities. By the time
the checkered flag falls this afternoon, Kyle will have travelled 4200 miles in the air…1050 miles on the ground, not withstanding
green-white-checkered finishes. It is only 2,462 miles from New York to Los Angeles one way. It is 3,471 miles from New York to London,
England one way. Kyle will actually travel as many miles this weekend as the distance from New York City….to Ankara, Turkey.
Oh yeah…and that doesn’t include his jaunt to Rossdale, Ohio to take part in the Prelude to the Dream at Eldora. That was another 724 miles
round trip, plus who knows how many miles around the track. That would get him from the Big Apple to Baghdad, Iraq one way.
To do all of this, Kyle is leasing a plane that is faster than the one he usually uses. He has been jetting back and forth between Texas,
Tennessee, and Pennsylvania in a jet that can travel mach .8, or about 564 mph. That means it took him just over an hour to get from Pocono
to Nashville yesterday.
My sister, who is 34 years old, made a trip from Narita, Japan to Washington DC yesterday. That was a 7100 mile trip…all on one plane…and
took 12 hours. When she got off the plane, her comment was “I’m schnockered”, and she went home to pass out for the night.
Kyle is 11 years younger than my sister, and apparently that 11 years can make a lot of difference in resiliency of the body to recover. If
you look at the expected temperatures in Long Pond, PA, for today, you will also see that he is ending the week with not only the longest
race, but the hottest.
Pocono is usually nice and cool for the first race…however there has been record heat on the east coast this week, and the guys will be
experiencing July-type temperatures in their cars today.
I spent the weekend gardening and mulching and ducking in and out of the house to cool off. The drivers won’t have that option today, and
Pocono is a long, difficult track.
All I can say is I hope Kyle was able to get a good night sleep last night.
He started the weekend off strong with a 2nd place finish to Ron Hornaday, Jr in Texas. We’ll see if he is as successful by the end of
today’s race. He won’t have won three races in one weekend in three different locations, but he will have lived out a racers dream by
racing in three…and four if you count Eldora…race tracks and done well in all of them.
My guess is tomorrow…he will be spending the day sleeping.
Getting back to Eldora and the Prelude for a moment... Last weekend, I mentioned that I was going to do the Pay Per View and watch the race
from home. That is probably the best $24.95 I have spent all year. Not only was the race awesome, but the money went straight from my
pocket into Kyle Petty’s.
Not one driver took a paycheck for Wednesday night’s event. Nor did the guys in the booth, the guys on the cameras, the people who helped
me see the race 395 miles away. At the end of the night, Tony Stewart, who owns the track, and coincidentally won the race, presented Kyle
Petty with a check for one million dollars for the Victory Junction Gang Camp.
That money will be used to help build a new Victory Junction Gang Camp in Kansas City, so that children in the western United States who
can’t travel all the way to North Carolina will still be able to take part in the adventure of camp, and all the benefits the Camp offers
to those kids with life-threatening illnesses.
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff
and/or management of IRN.
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