Kyle Busch to Make 500th Toyota NASCAR Start
No other driver has as many Toyota NASCAR starts, wins or accomplishments to his credit as driver Kyle Busch. Busch will make his 500th career NASCAR start in a Toyota this Saturday when he climbs behind the wheel of a Tundra race truck at Michigan International Speedway in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) race.
Busch joined the Toyota family in 2008 and wasted no time accumulating his 114 NASCAR victories in a Toyota – the most by any driver for the manufacturer. He earned the first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) victory for Toyota when he drove his Joe Gibbs Racing Camry to victory lane at Atlanta Motor Speedway in March 2008. In that first year, he tallied eight NSCS first-place trophies, 10 NASCAR Nationwide Series (NNS) wins, three NCWTS victories and quickly showed he was becoming the new face for Toyota in NASCAR.
In 2009, Busch wasted no time and set the Nationwide Series on fire en route to earning the first NNS driver’s championship for Toyota while maintaining full-time driving duties in the top-tier Sprint Cup Series and winning races in the NCWTS. The Las Vegas-native registered several NNS records that season, including 20 first or second-place finishes in 35 races, 10 straight finishes of first or second-place from June through August and leading the most laps (2,698 total) during the season.
In 2010, he formed Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) to compete in the NCWTS and went on to win the owner’s championship that year. KBM won the NCWTS owner’s championship again in 2013 to earn two titles in the team’s four year history.
Busch became the first driver in NASCAR history to sweep all three races in a single weekend at one track after he won the NSCS, NNS and NCWTS races at Tennessee’s Bristol Motor Speedway in August 2010. In the sport’s 60-plus-year history, no driver had accomplished the feat until Busch did while driving Toyota vehicles.To date, no driver has matched his record.
Fast forward to 2014 and Busch’s stats while driving Toyota race vehicles are hard to pass up. He has the most Toyota NASCAR starts (499). His 114 Toyota NASCAR victories top the leaderboard for the manufacturer that has spent 10 years in NASCAR (2004-2014). He averages a win in every four to five races he enters and has the most victories in each of the three top NASCAR series — 25 of 65 total NSCS trophies, 55 of 93 total NNS visits to victory lane and 34 of 122 NCWTS triumphs — ultimately a winning average of almost 23 percent.
Source: Toyota
