Kurt Busch won for the second time this season and first time at Pocono.
· The win was Busch’s 13th in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series.
· Today’s win is the ninth of the season for Ford, which is one less than last season’s total.
· Ford has 563 all-time NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series wins.
· The last time Roush Racing had at least three drivers finish in the top five was at Michigan this past June when Greg Biffle finished first and teammates Mark Martin (3rd), Matt Kenseth (4th) and Carl Edwards (5th) followed behind.
MARK MARTIN – No. 6 Viagra Taurus (Finished 3rd) – “We had a really good car today. I want to thank the Viagra team. They really had this Ford hooked up. The next-to-last set of tires, man, I could pull away at will. It’s just how fast did I want to go, but the last set of tires we were a little looser on. But it was a great run for us. At every restart we could hold our own. We stayed right up in the top three just about the whole race, so I guess I couldn’t ask for much more.” A SOLID TOP FIVE. “It was a good run for us. It’s just a joy to drive these kind of race cars.” WHAT ABOUT RACING WITH RUSTY? “We could have done a little bit more, but they had all those cautions.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Office Depot Taurus (Finished 4th) – “The Office Depot team did really well, but, to be honest with you, as great a day as it was it’s pretty much ruined by what happened there with Kasey. I screwed up and hit him, and he ended up wrecking. That’s not good. That was an accident.” ANOTHER GOOD RUN AT POCONO. “Yeah, I really like Pocono a lot. We had a great day. I wish we didn’t have that last restart because I ended up bumping into Kasey and, man, I would be really livid if somebody did that to me, so that was very frustrating. But our team did a great job coming from the rear. I’m very proud of this performance.” IT’S SUCH A SCRAMBLE ON THE RESTART. WHY WAS IT YOUR FAULT? “Well, he was in front of me and the front of my car is my responsibility and I bumped his car, so it’s my fault. That’s the bottom line.” A GOOD DAY FOR POINTS. “Yeah, the points are great. It’s a great day, but like I said, it takes a lot of fun out of the day when something like that happens because I really have a lot of respect for the 9 car and Kasey and all those guys.”
DALE JARRETT – No. 88 UPS Taurus (Finished 15th) – “We had a reasonable car, but nothing spectacular. I thought it was gonna be a little bit better than that. We didn’t play the track position game and tire game very good today and we got caught there early. That caught us making a green stop and the caution came out, but we could just never get it freed up in the center like we needed to. Then a couple of restarts there at the end I made the wrong move and got passed a couple of times. It’s just one of those days.” STILL IN THE POINTS HUNT. “Yeah, we just needed to work our way into the top 10. There were guys that finished in front of us that we really should have outrun, but a lot of people could probably say that.”
KURT BUSCH – No. 97 IRWIN/Sharpie Taurus – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW –
“This is sweet. It’s just a whole effort from out team. To be able to build a car like this, it starts with the chassis shop and guys hanging bodies on them. That crew that puts these bodies on these cars, and then Jimmy Fennig, what else can I say. The engineers, and then this engine. We were motoring down the straightaway. I have to thank the Roush-Yates combination. This is a great win. We were real happy with our car every practice. It was a real dominant win. It’s something that we don’t do all that often. I’m very proud of my team. My great sponsors, Irwin Industrial Tools, Sharpie, and then we’ve got Crown Royal and Smirnoff Ice. We’re having fun and this is what we needed to get things back on track.” YOU GOT SHUFFLED BACK.
HOW CONCERNED WERE YOU ABOUT GETTING BACK TO THE FRONT? “It didn’t look like we could pass many cars once we got shuffled back there. It was a combination of dirty air. Our car was out front all day, so we got tight behind other cars. We made good adjustments, but then we were loose overcompensating, so we were just trying to hit the right combination. But it was just a matter of time. I thought we could do it, just stick to our gameplan and it’s just been great. To bounce back like this, getting ready for the chase coming up, our fans are sticking with it. It’s great to be able to dominate like this. The fans have been great this year. Thanks to all the Kurt Busch fans out there.”
RICKY RUDD – No. 21 Motorcraft Genuine Parts Taurus (Finished 10th) – “The guys fought hard all day. We got that lap down. We pitted and the caution came out. I believe we were running 13th or 14th at the beginning of the race and it was time for a scheduled stop and we stopped, but as soon as we stopped the caution came out and we went a lap down. It took us a long time to get that back. We ran in clean air a lot and our car was very good. We ran Kurt Busch down one time and was getting ready to pass him when another caution came out, which put us back on the lead lap. But then we had to restart dead last in all that traffic and something about our car was just terrible in traffic. It just goes from being a neutral-loose car to being a junk car, but we came back for a top 10 and that feels pretty good.”
MARK MARTIN PRESS CONFERENCE –
DID YOU HAVE ANYTHING FOR RUSTY? “Not with all those cautions. Our car was pretty good, but we can’t seem to wind one of these races up without about six or eight cautions nowadays. I don’t have anything to complain about. My car was just awesome. It was good on the restarts. It was good on the long run. It did everything. It qualified good. It was just a fast race car. The next-to-last set of tires I could pull away from the field at anytime. I could run however fast I wanted to run. The last set of tires didn’t work quite as well so we wound up third. It was a good day for us.”
ARE SECOND AND THIRD SATISFYING FROM A CHASE STANDPOINT? “For me, not only did we lead the race in convincing fashion on the next-to-last set of tires, which felt really good, and we had great pit strategy, great pit stops, and a good car – but we also finally got just a touch of breathing room behind us. So if we can do this again next week at Indy, we’ll be looking good. I know our car will be this fast next week, and if we can get the same kind of result – I love this place. I love to race here – another top five.”
WHY NOT COME BACK NEXT YEAR? “I’m 46, but I’ve got more miles on me than Rusty.”
AT ONE POINT THERE WERE FIVE STRAIGHT DEBRIS CAUTIONS. “One of those debris cautions was a drink bottle, and it laid out there for 20 laps. I was like, ‘Please, don’t throw a caution for that green bottle.’”
SOME WERE BRAKE ROTORS. “And that was really dangerous, and they do a good job of spotting brake rotors.”
ON DEBRIS. “There were chunks of rubber. I’ve never seen a chunk of rubber hurt anybody. I don’t know. I’m old school. I loved all that green-flag racing earlier in the race. I’m old school, so I’m a big complainer about major debris cautions.”
IT SEEMS LIKE AERODYNAMICS TURN RACING INTO A FREEWAY DRIVE AND GUYS DON’T GET RACY UNTIL THE END. “So you’re calling guys getting racy wrecking. Is that what you mean? Nobody wrecked for a long time, so the racing wasn’t good? Because at the end there were wrecks and you’re saying at the end everybody was racing, so I don’t know.”
MORE ON THE RACE. “I will say that no matter what, you’re gonna have races that are barnburners and you’re gonna have races that are yawners and you can’t panic when you have a yawner. If that’s what you’re calling this one today, Rusty and I think it was a great race. You have runaway points and you have close points, that’s racing and you can’t fix that and you shouldn’t even worry about it.”
CAN YOU QUANTIFY WHAT CLEAN AIR MEANT? “I think Rusty hit on it today, too. A lot of people were really off on their setup today. Usually the cars are more equal, but you had a number of cars that could really pull away today. I’m sure Rusty experienced it too. I know whenever I got behind a reasonable running car it was sure hard to pass ‘em.”
WHAT DID YOU STRUGGLE WITH FOR 120 LAPS? “My brakes. I was pumping ‘em again. I pumped ‘em the whole race last time here, and I pumped ‘em most of this race. Right at the end, Rusty and I have been doing this stuff a long time, we’re trying to make the chase, rather than force the issue and slam brakes on and have nothing but rear, I was happy to finish it off. I wish that they wouldn’t have had all the cautions there at the end. We did have a good enough car to get up there, I think, and get by Rusty, but we couldn’t run with Kurt on that last set of tires. We restarted in front of him and he passed us and went on. We had what we had. It was a great run. The brakes are taking more abuse everywhere we go now because of the gear rule.”
WHAT ABOUT THE TUNNEL TURN TODAY? “I would be sorely surprised if they didn’t try to take that bump out of there, unless they just want to put a ski jump in the front straightaway, too. It’s pretty rough over there.”
HOW MUCH DID TODAY AFFECT YOUR DECISION ABOUT COMING BACK? “None. I still have my decision. I’m still gonna be where I am for I don’t know how long, so I really don’t even like talking about it because I want to go truck racing next year. We are working on trucks and we’re gonna go test later this year, and we’re gonna put that deal together as if that’s what I’m gonna be doing next year, but we don’t know. I don’t know.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE MORE MODERN RULES PACKAGE? “I like the short spoiler and the tires, too, because it puts more a premium on handling and that’s how Rusty and I grew up. That’s how you won. You beat people on handling and we like that. That suits both of our driving styles because that’s what we’ve done forever.”
DOES SOMEONE LIKE CARL EDWARDS HAVE AN ADVANTAGE BY NOT HAVING MUCH EXPERIENCE HERE? HE NEVER SHIFTED IN THE PAST LIKE YOU? “That’s a good question. I don’t think it’s the shifting yes or no. There are certain things that we’ll struggle with giving a fair shot sometimes based on our history. The young guy that doesn’t no better, once in a while, will go ahead and give a shot and it will work, where Rusty and I might think it wouldn’t work and give it a fair shot. So there are some instances where these young guys have an advantage in that. Over the long haul they’re gonna make more mistakes than we do on picking things. But Carl Edwards is an incredible driver – flat out. That’s the end of it.”
ON HISTORY. “Hey, when Rusty and I first came in 1982, if they would have gave us Richard Petty’s or Cale Yarborough’s or one of those guy’s cars to drive, set up and everything, we might have run a little bit better than we did, too.”
WITH THE POINTS RACE ARE YOU GUYS POINTS RACING? “We both were points racing. We didn’t have a car to win and we didn’t see any need in running over each other for five points. But every race is like that. When we were short track racing in 1977, third always paid better than fourth and you tried to get it, but you didn’t tear your stuff up to do it.”
IS IT GRATIFYING TO SEE RUSTY DOING SO WELL? “We got 25 years of history or so, I haven’t counted ‘em up but it’s a ton. Rusty and I have always been friends and we’ve always got along and we’ve never once had a problem, and I think everybody knows that. That speaks volumes. I can’t say that about Matt Kenseth. I’ve been friends with him for six to eight years and I’ve had a problem with him, and he’s a great guy. That tells you what kind of relationship we’ve had over the past 25 years.” CARL CALLED JACK AND ASKED IF HE COULD PASS YOU BECAUSE HE THOUGHT HE MIGHT BE FASTER. YOUR THOUGHTS? “Well, he wasn’t (laughter). I don’t know what to tell you about that.”
KURT BUSCH WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE
JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – No. 97 IRWIN/Sharpie Taurus – WHAT ABOUT THIS SUCCESS? “This is our 18th year, our 35th and 36th outing at the Poconos. I’ve always loved coming up here on the mountains. The air is dry and clean and crisp. I think there’s more oxygen from all these trees, but we didn’t manage to get it right on the race track. Mark ran second, I think, four times. We had a number of good outings, but we just couldn’t quite close the deal. Our engines are great. Doug and Robert and all the guys are doing just a super job on the engines with all the hundred-and-some people we’ve got on staff down there.
We haven’t had – knock on wood – mechanical failures this year that we’ve had sometimes and, hopefully, those aren’t in front of us waiting for the last 10 races. But engines have been great. We’re not struggling to find competitive horsepower. The horsepower seems to be adequate and they’re just incredible. They’re never late for the crew chiefs to set their cars up. The engines are just out of the equation in terms of being a problem. They’re just perfect for us right now. The big thing is that we’re in our second year with this new Taurus. Last year was the first year. We were very lucky for Kurt to be able to win the championship and Jimmy to be able to win that championship last year in the Irwin Industrial Tools Ford, but we didn’t really have the measure of it. We had cars all over the map and over the winter we sat down and looked at the things going right and the things that didn’t work. We consolidated our car construction activity and we built a lot of cars that are very similar. That’s one of the things that made it possible for Carl to get in there and do a good job was the fact that we understood what a good Taurus was and were able to put it under him.
We’re gonna have a change in the car for next year and that will be a little bit of an upset, but it looks like the numbers off the car – from its initial testing – are about where this car is – more similar to this car than I’m going to call it the ’97 model that we changed in 2004. It’s more similar to the 2004 car than the 2004 car was to the ’97 car. Beyond that, there’s a lot of science in the suspension and the springs and the shocks, and we were also probably a little behind the curve on that last year. I know Kurt and Jimmy – Jimmy was not slow to accept it – but Kurt was slow to accept the notion of what had previously been the rate of the rear springs in the front and the rate of the front springs in the rear. So you’ve got rear springs that are twice or three times as heavy as the front springs and we used to do it the other way around. I think I said that right. The rear springs now are considerably heavier than the front springs, even though the car is biased in its weight up front, and all the contemporary wisdom had been to put the light springs in the back and to keep the car off the springs so it didn’t bottom out when it went in the corner. Well, right now we’re controlling the ride height of the cars and keeping the balance down on the ground for the air effect by bottoming the springs out.
I know when we went to Chicago, Jimmy and Kurt had finally had enough of getting beat with it and they said, ‘Alright, this is our science project. We don’t like the way it feels, but we’re gonna do it,’ and they got through it with a new understanding of the chassis that all of the guys had pretty much been on and the rest of the garage was pretty much on. So the springs and the shocks and the bars have come together on the Taurus. Great engines from the Roush-Yates organization. Everybody in the organization is doing a great job. The pit stops are all great. Andy is doing a great job with the training and the practice and everything, and it’s all come together. I’d like to think that we’re getting ready to peak for these last 10 races, but Kurt and Jimmy were in no panic to win races or to lead a bunch of laps as long as they were comfortably in the 10. But the closer we get to it, the more urgency there is to really show what we’ve got and, among all the inventory of cars that are available, to pick the ones that they’re gonna want to take at the races that really count at the end.”
WHAT ARE YOU THINKING WITH THREE CARS UP THERE BATTLING FOR THE WIN? “What was going through my mind is it looked like it was Kurt’s race to lose. He had been the dominant car in the field and the dominant Roush car all day, so if he didn’t run over something or a part didn’t break and fall off the car, he was gonna be the car that had the greatest chance. Carl had taken a chance and took two tires, along with Greg and a number of other people. Although he was doing a great job on two tires, he probably wasn’t as fast and didn’t look like he was as fast as Mark Martin. There was some anxiety that he would race Mark the way Mark would have raced him if he would have had the better tires. So we were watching all that to see how that developed. I was hoping that we didn’t have big pileup and take out three of our four cars. Predictably, Kurt was gonna be out front, down and gone, but I was real nervous how the rest of it was gonna work out.”
KURT BUSCH – No. 97 IRWIN /Sharpie Taurus – “It was really a superb day. This is Pocono perfection for Jack this year and for us to dominate today and put laps together on short runs, long runs, it’s just a tribute to what the crew is doing for me and that’s building great cars, super pit stops. It’s just a matter of having everything fall our way, which we only depended on pit strategy and it did at the end. It was a super car. It’s a big win for us. To get back into victory lane at a big, fast race track, we haven’t done that since the summer of 2003, so this is a big momentum run for us. We couldn’t be more excited. A few more small races before we get into the chase and then it’s time to go, so this definitely helps us.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – WILL YOU LOOK AT THE BRAKE SITUATION? “The short answer to that is yes. We’ll go back, probably not tomorrow, but probably by Tuesday there will be a tear down layout of all the brakes off all the cars and we’ll evaluate them. Kurt also had a problem, if I understood what I was hearing correctly, where he lost his brake once, too. So there was an issue, I think, where there was some knock back – where you’re going through a harmonic and knocking the pads back, and then you had to pump them unpredictably. I think that’s probably what happened to Kurt. It was something more sinister that happened to Mark, and I think Matt also had a problem. So there was something going on that we’ve got to look at the hydraulic side of it and the pads and the rotors and see if something is glaring. We came from Loudon and I looked at Greg’s brake pads after the race was over – his rotors – he finished second and he had horrible brake rotors and Kurt’s were perfect. They looked like they’d run another race, so we set up a show-and-tell last week and Greg appreciated the difference in the wear that was associated with the pads that he hadn’t previously wanted to use. He got cured and he didn’t have the pad problem I’m sure. This is a constant process of evaluating the components and dealing with the various race tracks. Here to for we ran more gear here, and you slowed down, you had engine braking that would slow you down, so the duty cycle brakes is much more severe this year than it’s ever been based on the gear rule.”
KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – DID YOU THINK THE RACE WAS EVER GOING TO END? “It seemed like lap 1 to 100 went by pretty quick with us out front putting on a torrid pace. Then looking forward to the end, you always have to look out for the unforeseen circumstance, whether it’s the extra yellows. You have more competitive cars at the end of a race once people dial in their chassis, and then to be able to race veterans like Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin, who are in their final years. It was exciting for me. It was a challenge and it was great to be able to come out on top. You always have to race every lap for what it’s worth and until the checkered flag drops your job isn’t done. That’s the motto that I keep. If it’s not won and over yet, we keep digging. I had a great race car that would restart well. It would run fast lap times at the beginning of a run and at the end, so it was just a matter of getting to lap 200 and then there’s always a chance for a green-white-checker and we put the hammer down and we went. It’s just a great tribute to what my team gave me for a car. I’m real proud to drive Jimmy Fennig’s equipment.”
WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE THIS MOMENTUM TO INDY AND ARE YOU GLAD YOU HAVE A WEEK OFF? “I’m glad there’s a weekend off. It’s such a strenuous run for our guys. The A team, the B team that shows up every Sunday, they need a weekend off. It’s at a time in the season where it could be a better timing event, but if you can get everybody focused and their batteries recharged and ready to rip for Indy, the Indianapolis race is gaining popularity and gaining prestige every year, and it feels like the Daytona 500 when we go in there but it’s only for a short three days. It’ll be nice to have this weekend off. I’m heading overseas to Eastern Europe to watch the Formula One race and to hang out with Bernie Ecclestone, so that will be fun.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – “The rest of the good news there is that in addition to getting a week off, it also gives them time to turn the car around, so there is a very good possibility that that car will be under a different paint scheme, but it will be at Indianapolis. Kurt and Jimmy will meet on that, but Jimmy and I are in discussion and he’s leaning pretty heavy that way.”
KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – DO YOU FEEL YOU RUINED THE RUSTY-MARK RETIREMENT PARTY? “In one aspect. Those two competitors, between the two of them, probably have 50 top 10s here, and it’s really neat to race against guys like that – to challenge their knowledge and to be able to come out on top, I’m just beside myself. Especially with Rusty there and Mark. I mean, what two better competitors. There are still guys like four-time champion Gordon out there and then there’s Bill Elliott that runs occasionally, to be able to run against those veterans and to have the notoriety from our championship last season, it doesn’t put me in that column, but yet it’s great to race with those guys because you feel as if you’re more familiar with their territory and there’s a trust factor as well.”
HOW DIFFERENT WAS THE CAR IN TRAFFIC AND ANY DOUBT ABOUT GETTING BACK TO THE FRONT? “It was a challenge once we got pushed back. I think the top eight had two tires and then we got beat out of the pits by Newman, so we were like ninth or 10th with four fresh tires. I knew we could pick off a few right away, and then it’s tough because we hadn’t been back in those restarts all day, so you’re three-wide, you’re with lapped cars. You’re trying to pass this one guy and now you’re three-wide and somebody else is going by you. It’s tough. When the car is running up front, it seems like there is no evil, and then you get back behind a few guys and all kinds of evil comes out in it. It doesn’t turn in. It doesn’t stick as good in the center of the corner, so the car was a bit tighter. We made adjustments for that and then once we did get back up to the lead the car was loose. That’s why I couldn’t quite get back by Mark Martin, I think with like 40 to go. So we made some good adjustments in the pits and we outraced him at the end. That’s what it takes is just the patience when you’re behind and a go-to car when you’re up front.”
WERE YOU WATCHING THE BATTLE FOR SECOND? “It’s always good to see competitors race against each other when they’re behind you. That enables the leader to stretch out his lead a little bit, and knowing who it was back there and how hungry they are to win, it was exciting just to see those guys. I was hoping we could just check out and do our own deal, but to see the 2 and the 6 back there, it’s reminiscent of old times and it’ll be a long time again before there are some old drivers in those seats.”
JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – THOUGHTS ON WATCHING MARK AND RUSTY RACE? “Watching Mark and Rusty race together is really a treat. You know I came on the scene with both of them in 1988, but they had 10 years of really hard racing between them. The last time I was down at Mark’s museum, where he’s got all his trophies and old race cars and his artifacts, I saw pictures of he and Rusty that looked like they weren’t 15 years old when they started. I remember how mortified I was because Buddy Parrott tried to drag me off the top of a pit box at Dover one day, that’s before he worked for me, when Mark had wrecked Rusty at Dover. He slid under him down in turn three and lost it and just plowed him. Rusty went careening into the wall and Mark went on and finished pretty good that day. He used him for a buffer. Anyway, I was sure there was gonna be fistfight over that deal. That was bad, but the embraced one another and commiserated about times gone past but I didn’t know anything about. So as interesting and as emotional as it is for me to watch those two guys duking it out for wha
