Championship Chase Continues at Darlington
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. (May 6, 2009) – Believe it or not, 25.71428 percent of the NASCAR Nationwide Series schedule is complete. And Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 18 Z-Line Designs Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, leads the championship standings by 82 points over secondplace Carl Edwards with nine of 35 races in the books.
While Edwards has six top-five finishes to Busch’s five, the Z-Line Designs driver leads the series in nearly every other statistical category including wins (three), top-10 finishes (six), earnings ($384,540) and laps led (722 – more than twice as many as Edwards).
Busch will look to build upon those impressive Nationwide Series stats this week in the Diamond Hill Plywood 200, which will be conducted at one of the oldest and toughest tracks on the schedule – Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.
Darlington, the 1.366-mile, high-banked, egg-shaped oval, has been part of the NASCAR landscape since 1950, and has always challenged man and machine with its odd shape and high speeds.
But, if there’s one guy who was probably made to race at a place like Darlington, it’s Busch, whose brash, aggressive driving style has suited him well at the track nicknamed “The Lady in Black.”
The Las Vegas native won last year’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Darlington and, in addition to a Nationwide Series pole in March 2004, has started worse than eighth only once in five Nationwide Series starts there. Perhaps most impressive, however, was the 2003 Nationwide Series event in which Busch, at only 18 years old, finished second in his first Darlington start and his third-ever start in the series.
This week, Busch will look to add Nationwide Series win number four to his 2009 resume, updating a list that already includes Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, and last weekend at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway.
He will do so with valued partner Z-Line Designs, the designer and import manufacturer of ready-to-assemble furniture, on his No. 18 Toyota, along with B.J.’s Wholesale Club.
Headquartered in Natick, Mass., B.J.’s Wholesale Club, Inc., is a leading operator of warehouse clubs in the eastern United States. B.J.’s will be carrying a new “Back-To-School” task chair this summer and offers a selection of Z-Line Designs’ home entertainment products, which range from various television stands to flat panel stands with integrated mounting systems. In July, B.J.’s will be introducing a new selection of Z-Line Designs flat panel stands with integrated mounting systems priced for today’s tech-savvy customers looking for sophisticated and contemporary styles at every price range.
