No one ever said winning a Sprint Cup title would be easy — a lesson Kyle Busch learned last week at New Hampshire.

To say that race will be Busch’s undoing is quite premature, but when has a driver gone from leading the points race after 26 races to eighth in just one event? Basically gone is a season’s worth of work. Eight wins and 80 bonus points, see ya. Of course, he could be 12th, so I guess those eight wins meant something.

Busch still has nine races to rally and no one would be surprised if he did, but you have to wonder if this is the point where he starts to press.

If this same thing had happened to Jimmie Johnson or Tony Stewart, the emotional ramifications wouldn’t be as severe. But this is Kyle Busch, who has never been in this situation. He’s been great up front all season, but what can he do as the chaser? Of course, he said all the right things this week as the Chase hit Dover.

“We’ve got to put last week behind us and look ahead to this week,” Busch said. “Last week is over, and there’s nothing we can do about it. “(Crew chief) Steve Addington and all the guys have given me great stuff this year, so one problem isn’t going to deter me. I believe in these guys. Whenever we’ve had a bad race, we’ve been able to put it behind us the next week.”

Very true. Busch and his team do seem to thrive on adversity. Nearly every time they’ve stumbled this year, they’ve rallied the next week. He was awful at New Hampshire earlier this year and came back to win at Daytona. He ran poorly at Pocono, then won at Watkins Glen.

“This team has had a knack for forgetting about bad weeks quickly,” he said, “and hopefully we can do that this week, too.”

Johnson has been in Busch’s shoes. His first Cup title in 2006 featured a pair of possible pitfalls, but four wins later — with some trouble for other drivers — Johnson was celebrating. He in no way believes one poor race will keep Busch from contending.

“That team is strong, and if I was on that race team and in Kyle’s shoes, I would find every positive throughout the course of the season and rally my team around that,” Johnson said. “And know that there are nine to go and say all the positive things that you need to say. At this point, there is no telling if that is going to be the fatal blow or not. If you look at ’06 when we won it, everybody had trouble. We crashed at Talladega that late in the season and came back and won.

“You just don’t know yet. Those guys, they are smart. They have a great race team and they have the ability to climb back from that. So we will just have to see what takes place. I can speak from experience: There is not a worse feeling than to leave Loudon knowing you are starting the Chase and you are that far behind and you have had a terrible day. It makes for a long couple of weeks.”

The first three Chases showed that one poor race doesn’t kill championship hopes. It did last year, however, as Johnson and Jeff Gordon poured in top-five after top-five. With the COT proving so difficult to get a read on, very few who believe any team is going through 10 races without trouble.

For that reason, and with Busch already having his problem, there is growing talk that this could be the most wide-open Chase of them all. For all the talk of a Busch, Johnson and Carl Edwards shootout, at least one driver is on record as saying this could be the year any one of the competitors can win.

“It’s just too early to be, you know, deciding who is going to win and who is not going to win,” said Jeff Burton, who is in fifth place. “It’s just way too early. I said that last week before the thing even started.

“There’s three drivers that everybody picked: ‘It’s one of those three drivers that is going to win the Chase.’ I think people are crazy to think that. I know they’re the ones that deserve the consideration, for sure, based on what they’ve done. But people who watch racing ought to remember that two races out of 10 can completely ruin a guy’s chance to win a championship.”

Was Burton trying to put a little more pressure on Busch? Sure, why not? But here’s guessing the young Joe Gibbs Racing driver has too much confidence in his team to get down and start pressing. If he does, though, it will be a wasted opportunity that might haunt him for years.

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