Kurt Busch (http://www.kurtbusch.com)wasn’t cloaked once again in the shadow of his younger brother, Kyle, this weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway. In fact, he wasn’t in any shadows at all for the 234 out of 300 laps that he led during the Kobalt Tools 500. His Penske-prepared Miller Lite Dodge didn’t take any prisoners even though Jeff Gordon made a last minute bid for the gold, trailing him by a mere 0.332 seconds for the number two spot.

Kurt had last visited Victory Lane at Loudon N.H. on June 29, 2008, and since that time, the Penske organization was hungry for some well deserved glory but the opportunities were few and far between, especially toward the latter part of the season when it was clear that Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards were fighting to gain position on a road only wide enough for one of them.

A 10th at Daytona, a 5th at Fontana and a dismal 23rd at Las Vegas surely didn’t inspire a mood of celebration for it seemed that 2009 was poised, at least in the beginning, to welcome the debut of the highly rated Matt Kenseth/Kyle Busch Show on the Sprint Cup Channel. On the other hand, one only needed to factor in the immense talent this former NASCAR Cup champion has at his disposal before the naysayers had reason to believe that it was just a matter of time until the next champagne party began.

It was a disappointing day for the sentimental favorite, Mark Martin, who started on the pole with high hopes but ended up in 31st position, 14 laps down after he cut a tire and caught the wall, as well as Marcos Ambrose’s gas man, Jimmie Watts, who ran out into the quad-oval to retrieve a runaway tire, necessitating a yellow caution resulting in his own suspension for the remainder of the race.