The NASCAR Busch Series is a stock car racing series owned and operated by NASCAR. It is NASCAR’s “minor league” circuit (often compared to Triple-A baseball), and is a proving ground for drivers who wish to step up to the organization’s “big league” circuit, the Nextel Cup. Busch Series races are frequently held in the same venue as, and a day prior to, the Nextel Cup race scheduled for that weekend, encouraging fans to attend both events.
In December 2006, NASCAR officials confirmed that Anheuser-Busch, parent company for Busch Beer, will not renew its sponsorship of NASCAR’s No. 2 series after the end of the 2007 season. Rumored new sponsors for the series include Wal-Mart, Samsung and Subway.
The series emerged from NASCAR’s old Sportsman division, which was formed in 1950 as NASCAR’s short track race division. It was NASCAR’s third series. The sportsman cars were not current model cars, and could be modified more (but not as much as Modified series cars). It became the Late Model Sportsman series in 1968, and soon featured races on larger tracks, such as Daytona International Speedway. Drivers used obsolete Grand National (now NEXTEL Cup) cars on larger tracks. Grand National cars were required to be less than three years old. Short track cars with relatively small 300 cubic inch V-8 motors were used. Drivers used smaller current year models featuring V6 motors. The cars looked like smaller versions of Cup cars.
The modern-day Busch Series was formed in 1982, when Anheuser-Busch sponsored a newly reformed late-model sportsman series with its Budweiser brand. The series switched sponsorship to Busch in 1984. It was renamed in 1986 to the Busch Grand National Series. The V6 based cars left the series at the end of the 1994 season, though some competitors still used the V6 engines at some short track events during the 1995 season. The cars gradually changed to cars just like Cup cars. Grand National was dropped from the series’ title in 2003. Following the 2007 season, Anheuser-Busch, makers of the Busch brand of beer, has said they will not renew their contract with NASCAR, preferring to stay onboard with their Budweiser brand sponsorship of the Pole Award in NEXTEL Cup. The series will have a new sponsor in 2008
The cars used today in the Busch Series are slightly different versions of their Nextel Cup counterparts, the main differences being a slightly shorter wheelbase (105″ instead of 110″) and a larger spoiler (57″ wide x 5.75″ high instead of 55″ x 4.5″). In the past, Busch Series competitors could use makes of cars not used in the Cup series, as well as V-6 engines instead of Cup’s V-8s, but the cars used in the series now are very similar.
On March 6, 2005, the Busch Series held its first race outside the United States, the Telcel-Motorola 200. The race was held in Mexico City, Mexico at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, a track that had previously held Formula One and Champ Car races in the past, and was won by Martin Truex Jr.. On August 4, 2007, the Busch Series held its second race outside of the United States, at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Quebec, another road course. It was won by Kevin Harvick, while Quebec native Patrick Carpentier finished second.
Beginning in 2007, ESPN2 will be the exclusive carrier of all Busch Series races, replacing FOX, FX, TNT and NBC. Some sponsors have cricitised the new television deal, noting only six races will appear on broadcast network television (through a branding deal on ABC), and none in prime-time; in recent years, as many as nine races in the Busch Series have aired on network television, with two 2005 races ending up in prime-time television. Most of the races on ABC were chosen so ESPN2 could air major sporting events.
Busch Series cars used fuel that contained lead. NASCAR conducted a three-race test of unleaded fuel in this series that began with the July 29, 2006 race at Gateway International Raceway. The fuel, Sunoco GT 260 Unleaded, will become mandatory in all series starting with the second weekend of the 2007 series, as Daytona will be the last race weekend with leaded fuel. Once the Car of Tomorrow is implemented in the Nextel Cup series, NASCAR will begin work on changing the cars run in the Busch Series. NASCAR has been approached by manufacturers about using differently shaped and named car models as the basis for the cars in the Busch Series when this change is made. NASCAR has been receptive to the idea.
