Kyle Bush too good for new US F1 team

Kyle Busch has been winning in the Truck, Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series on a regular basis the past two years. In fact over those two years he is the winningest driver in NASCAR by a wide margin. Jeff Gordon said he was the best driver he ever raced against.

Kyle Busch proved once again on Sunday that he's the cream of the North American auto racing driving crop when he won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Shelby 427 at the speedway in his hometown of Las Vegas.

He not only won that race, he humbled everybody else who was in it. Sure, he was challenged periodically once he got the lead, but any time somebody else got really close, he simply swatted them away as you would a house fly.

What made his victory all the more amazing is that after winning the pole in qualifying trials Friday, he was forced to change his Toyota engine, which meant he had to start at the back of the 43-car field.

So he won the race by coming through the field from dead last. You don't see that sort of thing very often.

Earlier in the week, Kyle Busch said he was very open to the idea of driving for the new U.S. Formula One team that was officially launched last Tuesday. He suggested that he'd like to win a NASCAR Sprint Cup championship first but then, yes, he wouldn't mind going off and conquering the world before returning to Cup to finish out his career.

I've been saying for several years now that this guy is F1 material – most recently in this column last Monday – and it's refreshing to hear him acknowledge interest.

But I would hope a team like Toyota F1 – which would make perfectly good sense, don't you think? – might test him first and offer him a contract rather than see him go with USF1, because if the announcement this week is any indication of what to expect from that new outfit, I'd strongly recommend that he take a pass.

The two principals of USF1 – former Ligier and Onyx engineer Ken Anderson and ex-Ferrari and Williams team manager Peter Windsor (he's Speed TV's pit-lane reporter at F1 races) – conducted a press conference Tuesday to officially launch the new team.

This is what they said:

They don't have a shop.

They don't have any employees.

They don't have any drivers, although they have a lot of names on a list.

They don't have any sponsors.

Although the world is in recession, they say they "have the money" to get things going but didn't want to be too specific about the amount.

Despite all of the above, they say they plan to have a car designed and built and shaker-pad or wind-tunnel tested by the end of the year. They say they'll conduct on-track testing in Europe next winter and be ready to contest the world championship when the 2010 season opens.

Windsor sent so far as to suggest – later in the week – that they would be looking at top 10 finishes by their second season.

And I say they're dreaming. Thestar.com