Kyle Busch steps up to latest test

Kyle Busch led 52 laps while winning his eighth race of the season. AP

Five things we learned on Sunday at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International, the last stop of the season the Cup circuit will make at a road course.

1. Kyle Busch knows how to respond to garage trash talk.

In the days before the green flag dropped at the Glen, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson both minimized the success that Busch has had this season. Gordon said that despite the fact that Busch had won a series-high seven races, it was Carl Edwards, not Busch, who was the favorite to win the championship. And when Johnson named his list of title favorites, he listed himself, Jeff Gordon, and Tony Stewart.

Why no love for Busch, who was a teammate of Johnson's and Gordon's for three seasons at Hendrick Motorsports? Simple: The consensus in the garage is that several teams, including Johnson's and Edwards', have caught up to Busch, and that whatever mechanical advantage Busch enjoyed over the first half of the season has disappeared. The lap times, which don't lie, supported this thesis as well, as Edwards and Johnson have consistently posted faster times on the stopwatch than Busch over the last several races.

But on Sunday, Busch reverted back to his dominating ways, leading 52 laps in winning his eighth race of the season. Granted, in the big picture of the championship, this victory isn't all that significant given there aren't any road courses in the Chase -- which means the setup information in Busch's car on Sunday won't transfer to any other tracks this season, but this win clearly solidifies Busch's status as a top-flight road course racer. Consider: He won the first road course race this season at Sonoma, he won at the road course in Mexico City back in March in a Nationwide race, and on Saturday he finished second at the Glen in the Nationwide race -- even though he'd never driven that car before.

Busch's win also added ten more bonus points to the total that he'll take into the Chase, and he could have as much as a 50-point lead over the rest of the field when the Chase begins in New Hampshire on Sept. 14. This means Busch will have something in his pocket that no one else will: a mulligan. Because of his points advantage, he could suffer a 30th or worse finish in the Chase and still win the championship, a luxury no other driver will enjoy.

2. Jeff Gordon is struggling.

For the last few weeks Gordon and his crew have been pointing to Watkins Glen as the track where they would kick-start their season. Gordon long has been considered the top road course racer in NASCAR -- he's won four times at the Glen -- and this race looked like the one in which he would end his 26-race winless streak.

Well, the draught continued on Sunday. Gordon struggled with his handling all afternoon, which has been his primary problem this season, and he finished a disappointing 29th. He's currently sixth in the standings and appears to be a virtual lock to make the Chase. Yet no one in the garage fears Gordon like they did last year, when he won the regular season points title, took six checkered flags, had a career-high 30 top 10 finishes and finished second in the final standings. Gordon and his crew chief Steve Letarte have been out of sync since February, and suddenly it looks like Gordon may not win a race this season for the first time since 1993, his rookie year.

3. A.J. Allmendinger is flashing some talent.

If you're a Cup owner looking for a young, talented driver, cast your eyes on the 26-year-old Allmendinger. Though his teammate at Team Red Bull, Brian Vickers, has struggled in recent weeks -- Vickers hasn't finished higher than 18th -- Allmendinger is starting to come on. He finished 10th at Indy, 18th at Pocono, and on Sunday at the Glen he wound up 11th. These may not sound like spectacular finishes, but remember that his equipment is nowhere near the caliber of the drivers hailing from Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing and Roush Racing. Several people I've talked to recently feel that Allmendinger may be the most underrated driver in the sport. Team Red Bull would be wise to lock him into a long-term deal, something it hasn't yet done.

4. Tony Stewart had another solid race.

Ever since his poor run at Indy three weeks ago when he finished 23rd, which promoted a profanity-laced exchange over the radio with his crew chief Greg Zipadelli late in the race, Stewart has authored two nice runs. A week after finishing second at Pocono, Stewart came in second at the Glen. What's more, he said all the right things afterward, telling the cameras and notebooks that it was a good day for Joe Gibbs Racing, that he was proud of his JGR teammate Kyle Busch, and that Zipadelli had done a masterful job in setting up the car.

Even though they're winless this season, Stewart and Zipadelli are eminently capable of heating up in the Chase and stealing the title the way Kurt Busch did in 2004, when he made little noise in the regular season then caught fire in the Chase. As long as Stewart doesn't let the distractions of his impending departure from JGR to Stewart Haas Racing next season get the best of him -- and that won't be easy, considering he's essentially building a whole new team -- it's worth keeping a close eye on Stewart and Zipadelli over the next few weeks, because their winless streak may very well soon end.

5. The CoT continues to impress in the safety department.

With the laps winding down at the Glen, rookie Michael McDowell got into the side of David Gilliland as the two hurtled into Turn 11. Gilliland spun and triggered one of the most violent wrecks of the Cup season. When it was over, the front end of Gilliland's car was virtually destroyed, Bobby Labonte was painfully limping away from his mangled No. 43 Chevy, and Sam Hornish Jr. was engulfed in a cloud of dust after he rammed into the retaining barrier that was stationed in front of the pit wall.

Yet the most significant development from this harrowing, multi-car accident was that no one was seriously injured. As I wrote in the magazine a few weeks ago in a feature story about safety in NASCAR, this sport has never been safer than it is today. Experts I talked to still predict there will be another tragedy in the sport at some point in the future, but the risks have been reduced dramatically by three things: the Car of Tomorrow; the SAFER walls that line the tracks; and the innovations made inside the car, especially the HANS device.

NASCAR's safety push, however, took a big hit recently when Steve Peterson, who was NASCAR's technical director, died suddenly in his home on July 15 at the age of 58 of natural causes. A few weeks before his death I spent several hours with Peterson as he guided me around NASCAR's Research and Development Center outside of Charlotte, and it was clear to me that he knew as much about safety in motorsports as anyone in the United States -- maybe the world. The loss of Peterson is a big one for NASCAR, but the results of his work will be felt for years. Surely, they were on Sunday.