<table> </table> I t was the middle of June last year, just a couple of days after it was officially announced that he would not be back with Hendrick Motorsports. Kyle Busch was still feeling like a pi&#241;ata.</p><p>Busch was clearly feeling hurt by his very-public dismissal from NASCAR&#8217;s best team. He sounded confused about what had gone wrong in doomed contract negotiations with Hendrick, but he also thought that perhaps a good thing was happening.</p><p>It was at that point that he thought he could do better someplace other than Hendrick Motorsports.</p><p>Busch sounded like he was trying to convince himself of something in issuing that statement. But now, 13 months later, his words of that day stand as an understatement.</p><p>Busch is having the kind of season which NASCAR has seldom, if ever, witnessed. The word &#8220;domination&#8221; is overused in professional sports, but in Busch&#8217;s case in 2008, it is absolutely descriptive and appropriate.</p><p>As four-time Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon said of the season his former teammate is having, &#8220;It&#8217;s crazy.&#8221;</p><p>Busch arrived on the Sprint Cup scene in 2004, the year his older brother, Kurt, won the series championship. Kyle was good, not great as a Hendrick driver.</p><p>Then came Dale Earnhardt Jr.&#8217;s decision to go free agent, Rick Hendrick&#8217;s decision to hire him and Busch&#8217;s move to Joe Gibbs Racing for the 2008 season.</p><p>&#8220;We think we&#8217;ve got a real special gift here in Kyle,&#8221; Gibbs Racing president J.D. Gibbs said when it was announced that Busch had chosen his team over several other pursuing teams.</p><p>Just how special that gift is has become the talk of the season.</p><p>Busch has a series best seven victories through the first 19 races of the Sprint Cup season. He&#8217;s running away with the points lead &#8212; he&#8217;s 262 up on second-place Earnhardt and almost 300 up on third-place Jeff Burton. With 12 top-five finishes, he is the only Cup driver in double digits in that category (the next nearest drivers have just seven).</p><p>If his trend of success continues, he could head into the Chase with a 60-point lead.</p><p>&#8220;He&#8217;s going to be tough to beat regardless of whether he has those points,&#8221; driver Carl Edwards said. &#8220;But if you give him a head start, that&#8217;s not good.&#8221;</p><p>But wait, as Billy Mays says in Mighty Putty commercials, there&#8217;s more. Busch has a tied-for-series-best five victories in the Nationwide series and two victories in eight starts in the Craftsman Truck series.</p><p>Not Gordon, nor Darrell Waltrip, nor Earnhardt Sr. or anybody else in the modern era has dominated NASCAR like that. About the only thing Busch has not won is the love of the fans, and that appears to be coming.</p><p>So how does it feel to be Kyle Busch right now?</p><p>&#8220;It feels really, really good. I can tell you that,&#8221; he said.</p><p>It also feels good to be around Busch right now. &#8220;I felt like we could contend for wins week in and week out,&#8221; crew chief Steve Addington said. &#8220;But winning seven races already, that&#8217;s just crazy. It&#8217;s awesome. It&#8217;s a dream.&#8221;</p><p>Busch has won two straight Cup races and three of the last four. A couple of those victories have come the hard way &#8212; by coming from behind late.</p><p>Last weekend in Chicago, he won the Cup race and the Nationwide race.</p><p>Gordon, who knows a couple of things about domination and being on a roll, explained what is going on under Busch&#8217;s helmet these days.</p><p>&#8220;You&#8217;re winning races that you feel like you, as a team, really worked hard for and earned,&#8221; Gordon said. &#8220;But then you start winning races that you felt like you should not have won and it kind of boggles your mind. That&#8217;s kind of the way I&#8217;ve seen those guys (Busch&#8217;s team). They&#8217;re strong. They&#8217;re good. They&#8217;ve done a great job.&#8221;</p><p>Ask Busch the secret to success this year and he cites his team, Toyota engines, chemistry, luck and a half-dozen other factors.</p><p>Ask Addington his strategy for victory from the pitbox and he&#8217;ll say, &#8220;Turn it over to him (Busch).&#8221;</p><p>All drivers know how quickly domination can turn to befuddlement in racing. Last week, Richard Petty, the winner of 200 races, pointed that out to Busch.</p><p>&#8220;You know,&#8221; Petty said, &#8220;you get on a roll and you wonder, where was he at last year, you know what I mean? Why wasn&#8217;t he doing that? And you get on a roll and everything goes good for a while, and all of a sudden, you&#8217;re like (winless) Tony Stewart is right now.&#8221;</p><p>Petty is 71. Busch is 23, but he knows the approach to take to his success.</p><p>&#8220;You know,&#8221; Busch said, &#8220;you cherish (success) when you can get it. Definitely, this year is one to cherish.&#8221;