It really can't be said any better than the way Kurt Busch himself put it.

"Wow, what a day, what a year," the 24-year-old sophomore driver said after winning his third race in five events and finishing third in the points standings.

After entering his rookie season with a lot of expectations, Busch finished 27th. He entered this season with no expectations. He put on a late-season clinic that turned heads and notched him third.

And as good as that was, and as much as it will be celebrated by Busch and the entire Roush Racing family -- the season is over, now, and the expectations for next year will soar.

Busch knows that, and he's already trying to lobby the pundits to simmer down.

"We've been on a torrid pace here at the end, somewhat of a mind-boggling pace to gather up points, and it's great to be able to be in position at the final race of the year to be able to finish third in points," Busch said. "So as things progress and things develop, the third year is ahead of us and to say that if we don't win a championship, it won't be a disappointment. We'll continue striving forward. I've got many years in front of me. I think I've got time on my side, so to speak."

Not that Busch is trying to brace himself for a letdown in '03.

"We're for surely going to go after it next year," he quickly added. "Don't get me wrong."

It's hard to get Busch in the wrong when so much of what he's done this season has been right. Aside from a couple of outbursts that had him rivaling Tony Stewart on the angry-man's highlight reel -- like at many times during his feud with Jimmy Spencer, a.k.a. the "decrepit, old has-been" -- Busch has been a model of young talent.

He's listened. He's tried hard. He's driven hard. And he's refused to allow tough times to force him to quit.

	Busch's four victories ranked him behind only Matt Kenseth's five in 2002.

He speaks of August as if it were The Cursed Month. He calls it "the dismal month of August" as if it were dismal for all. But, in retrospect, he realizes it was a good thing in some ways.

"It was a great lesson learned," he said. "To finish last three times in a row, anybody could have got down on themselves -- any crew member could have started looking for another job, everybody could have started having a little chatter box. I think we all pulled together stronger as a team.

"The sponsor didn't let us down. They actually whooped me upside the head a couple times and said, 'Listen, let's focus on what's important.' So there was so many lessons learned from that. There was no one, big turnaround from that month of August, it was just a gradual swing -- somebody swinging that big pick ax and here we are in Miami with all that momentum rolling into next year."

And what a roll it has been. Busch came into 2001 with the burden of continuing a trend of top rookie performers -- like Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth. Casey Atwood bore some of that on his shoulders, but after the success Busch has experienced in every NASCAR series he's ever competed in, most of it fell on him.

He went and stunk, though, for a good part of the year. In hindsight, it was less Busch not coming through and more Roush Racing just experiencing a down year. Jeff Burton, expected to win the title, had to fight just to salvage a top-10. Mark Martin finished outside the top-10 for the first time in 13 years. Matt Kenseth followed Rookie of the Year honors without the success Stewart enjoyed.

In 2002, though, rather than dwell on a rookie campaign he could not change, Busch went out and made everyone forget it -- with the help of a new crew chief (he and Martin switched chiefs in the off-season).

"What a transition from that rookie year," he said, giving much credit to his new chief Jimmy Fennig. "These guys made that swap over the off-season and Jimmy Fennig's control of people, the way that he approaches races and race tracks -- (it) gave me the key to victory every time that I jumped in that race car this year and today was no different."

On this day, Busch won by forcing Ryan Newman to drive hard on old tires, and when Newman's tires were worn out he made the pass -- winning for the third time this year.

Busch doesn't want the mountain of expectations that often comes with finishing so high in the points, but Roush was worried about something else. He feels like NASCAR has played some part in the fact that he, nor Martin, still have no Winston Cup championship. And though he didn't come out and say it, he made it clear that deep down he believes the sanctioning body has gone after him at times.

He just hopes they don't go after his young tandem of Kenseth -- and now Busch.

"Jack Roush has much less interest in a Winston Cup championship than I ever have before based on the way I've been consistently treated, but that doesn't mean that my pain to pleasure ratio is such that I won't come back and do it again," Roush said. "We like what we do. We enjoy the challenge. We wish we had a better justice system to adjudicate the issues as they relate to penalties and to punishments that NASCAR deals out, but that's the way it is.

"So we're in and we'll put that aside and say that if we win a championship sometime in the future with Mark, that'll be great. I can't imagine for the next five years what they could do to stop a number of these guys -- Kurt and Matt and Jeff and Mark -- from having a number of championships as they go. It would be a travesty if they're not able to with the way they're running."

Rupen Fofaria is a beat writer for The Raleigh News & Observer.