New partner adds fuel to Kurt Busch’s drive to success

Wait. Whaddaya know, it wasn’t Kyle.

No, this time it was older brother Kurt, the 2004 Cup champion.

Kurt, 32, dominated Sunday’s race at Infineon Raceway in Northern California, leading 76 of 110 laps and winning by 2.6 seconds to get his first Cup win on a road course.

The 23rd win of his Cup career ended a 38-race winless streak and vaulted him to fourth in the points standings, one spot ahead of his little brother.

Kurt has been hot the past month, winning three of the past four poles in the No. 22 Penske Racing Dodge and finishing in the top 14 in each of the past six races. He is close to clinching a spot in the 10-race Chase for the Championship runoff.

But on Monday he became the subject of Internet talk among motor sports journalists after Jeff Gluck of SBnation.com posted a story that Kurt and Eva Busch, married for five years, are in the final stages of divorcing.

Some in the traveling band of NASCAR reporters think Kurt’s personal life is irrelevant. Gluck was criticized for not asking Kurt directly about the pending split, but many started noticing in April that Eva was not seen at races.

Some said Kurt had quit wearing a wedding ring.

It was time to provide an explanation after Kurt’s new girlfriend, Patricia Driscoll, joined him in Victory Lane and it clearly was shown on television.

It’s news Kurt soon will be divorced and has a new pit road partner. He, like other racing stars, are public figures.

He even conceded as much Thursday at Daytona Beach, Fla. — the site of Saturday’s Cup race — when he said he and Eva were legally separated and are working toward “formally terminating our marriage.”

You have the right to know about his marital status, especially if through endorsement deals we know he drinks Coca-Cola and loves to pump new sponsor Shell’s gasoline into his Dodge that’s lubricated by Pennzoil products.

An off-track life change could affect how a driver performs.

The stress of negotiating a divorce could have compounded the stress Kurt was experiencing over a poor-performing team when, during an April 30 race in Richmond, Va., he directed a profanity-laced tirade over the team’s radio toward Penske engineering — specifically technical director Tom German — that resulted in finishing three laps down in 22nd place.

Perhaps not coincidentally, German soon left the team to begin a prestigious post-graduate program at MIT.

The engineering effort is what had thrust Busch back into championship contention this season, but trying to get past the drama of being separated and having a new domestic mate couldn’t have helped eased the tension.

Driscoll has impressive credentials. The 33-year-old El Paso, Texas, native is president of The Armed Forces Foundation, a nonprofit group that offers financial support to military families.

The Infineon track was the perfect spot for Busch to introduce Driscoll to his public racing world because that’s where he had another life-changing race.

Busch won a regional NASCAR race there in 1999 while driving for Las Vegan Craig Keough, which thrust him onto Jack Roush’s radar and led to a tryout with Roush and eventually a multiyear contract.

Sunday’s victory and bringing his girlfriend out of the shadows has Kurt back on the fast track in racing — and life.

Jeff Wolf’s motor sports column is published Friday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He can be reached at jwolf@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0247. Visit lvrj.com/motorsports for more news and commentary. Follow Wolf on Twitter: @lvrjwolf.