Another Busch-vs-Busch Sunday? Kyle wins the Pocono 500 pole, but Kurt is right on his heels

  Kurt and Kyle: So which one is the better racer? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   POCONO, Pa.
   Kyle Busch tried the Triple this weekend before – racing Trucks at Texas Motor Speedway, racing Nationwide cars at Nashville Speedway, and racing Sprint Cup cars here at Pocono Raceway, in 2008 – and found that fun but exhausting and frustrating. And he's sticking around this track this weekend to focus on Sunday's Pocono 500.....which is working out well so far this weekend, with Busch winning the pole Friday, and storm clouds looming in the forecast for the rest of the weekend.
   Busch (169.485 mph) and Clint Bowyer (169.138 mph) will be on the front row for the 1 p.m. ET start, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kurt Busch right behind them.
   Neither Kyle Busch, Bowyer nor Earnhardt has won here, but Kurt Busch has a pair of wins (2005, 2007) and four seconds. With his Charlotte sweep, taking the All-Star and the 600, Kurt Busch looks like the early favorite here.
   Kyle Busch on the other hand hasn't had many good runs here. But he's won twice already this spring, and he's averaging fourth-place finishes the past two month. And it's not just Kyle, but teammates Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano have been strong too. Hamlin, in fact, probably should be the favorite, as well as he runs here, and with his three tour wins this spring.
   However maybe that little tiff between Hamlin and Kyle Busch has only served to fire Busch up....when Hamlin last week declared he had to take over leadership of the Joe Gibbs operation "because it's sure not going to be Kyle," a reference to their All-Star run-in.
   A good run here Sunday would further solidify Kyle Busch's pick of Dave Rogers as crew chief....but, given Kurt Busch's performances with his kid brother's old crew chief Steve Addington, well, it's a very, very interesting brother-versus-brother rivalry at the moment.
   "My biggest pitfall here is not being able to keep up with the track and the car as it changes during a (100-mile) run," Kyle Busch said. And this will likely be another four-hour race, with plenty of time for drivers and crew chiefs to become frustrated.
  
  

  Is this the weekend Dale Earnhardt Jr. roars back into the headlines? The sport could sure use a shot of good pub in nearby NYC (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

  
The most interesting part of the weekend so far was Earnhardt's performance.
   The son of the legend has become something of a mystery over the past year and a half, struggling week after week, while his Hendrick teammates take all the headlines. It's been exactly two years since his last tour win, a gas mileage win at Michigan.
   When Earnhardt won the pole at Atlanta several weeks ago, he said the team had started putting more emphasis on Friday qualifying but that he would be happier if he could get better Sunday results. (He finished 15th at Atlanta.)
    Since then, well, Earnhardt has lived up to his feelings that a man finishes about where he qualifies. While the two Buschs come here on highs, Earnhardt is still searching, after a ragged stretch – a 32nd at Richmond, an 18th at Darlington, a 30th at Dover, and a 22nd at Charlotte.
   "We've had a terrible month," Earnhardt said. "But we've run pretty good here over the years (a pair of seconds, a third, and two fourths)
   "We didn't prove anything to anybody outside the race team today, by how we qualified, but we did help our confidence, and every little bit helps."
    Indeed, for NASCAR too. The sport could use an Earnhardt victory perhaps to jump start the next leg of the tour, after sagging TV ratings in May, including a mediocre Charlotte 600 final national rating of 4.0 on Fox (which says that translates to 6.5 million viewers).
   Four top Ford men are running the new FR9 engine here, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle and AJ Allmendinger. But Friday was inconclusive: Kasey Kahne, who is leaving at the end of the season to join Rick Hendrick, had the fastest Ford, with the old engine.
    Robby Gordon, running in the Baja 500, had Ted Musgrave to qualify for him here, but Musgrave failed to make the cut. Geoff Bodine, running here for underfunded Tommy Baldwin, did make the field but without significant sponsorship the team will likely not go far Sunday; but Bodine says he's trying to put a deal together for next week's stop at Michigan.
 

                           The starting line for Sunday's Pocono 500 at Pocono Raceway

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   Mr. All-Business: Matt Kenseth. Can he make that new FR9 sing and dance? (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)