Top 20 Countdown: No. 6 Kyle Busch (Yahoo! Sports) at BetLM

Editor’s note: Yahoo! Sports is count­ing down the top 20 dri­vers of the 2012 sea­son, as pre­dicted by the Yahoo! Sports NASCAR staff – Jay Hart, Jay Bus­bee, Nick Bromberg and Geof­frey Miller. The count­down will con­clude Feb. 17 with the unveil­ing of the No. 1 driver.

2011 fin­ish: 12th

Our 2012 pre­dic­tions:

• Jay Hart: 7th

• Jay Bus­bee: 6th

• Nick Bromberg: 7th

• Geof­frey Miller: 7th

Crew chief: Dave Rogers

Off­sea­son action: Announced he will run a lim­ited Nation­wide Series sched­ule (between 13–15 races) and will not com­pete in the Camp­ing World Truck Series in 2012.

2012 out­look: In a year when the new-and-improved (Read: more mature) Kyle Busch was sup­posed to make his debut, the rowdy one found more trou­ble than ever.

He got into a fight with Kevin Har­vick, took a punch to the face from Richard Chil­dress, received a speed­ing ticket for dri­ving absurdly fast, only to upstage all of that when his actions in a Truck Series race — wreck­ing Ron Hor­na­day Jr. — led to him get­ting parked for the Chase race in Phoenix.

To Busch’s credit, there were signs of growth. He did try to extri­cate him­self from the fight with Har­vick and took full blame for get­ting parked at Phoenix. (He even offered Hor­na­day, then with­out a Truck Series ride for 2012, a job this season.)

But it’s fair to say Kyle Busch, once again, got in his own way, which is why he’s not ranked higher in the Yahoo! Sports Top 20 Count­down. A year ago, he came in at No. 2. Con­fi­dence in him has clearly waned.

Because of that, if you’re one of those who is sick of read­ing about how Busch has “grown up,” well, don’t worry about that in the imme­di­ate future. He’s reached a point now where he has to prove it before he’ll get any more credit. And in this case, prov­ing it means get­ting through an entire sea­son with­out pulling a “Busch.”

This doesn’t mean Kyle has to com­pletely change; a lit­tle bit of Rowdy is def­i­nitely good for the sport. It does, how­ever, mean he has to cut down on the dis­trac­tions that pre­vent him from com­pet­ing for a cham­pi­onship. Because in spite of all his tal­ent and all those wins, Busch has never been in title con­tention beyond a few races into the Chase.

He’s still only 26, but he’s enter­ing his eighth Cup sea­son. To this point, it’s always been “when” Kyle Busch wins a cham­pi­onship. Now, you have to won­der “if.”

Point of inter­est: No one led more laps in 2011 than Kyle Busch’s 1,455, which was 340 more than Jim­mie John­son. Busch led laps in 26 of 35 races last sea­son, includ­ing seven of the nine Chase races in which he competed.

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