KURT BUSCH SCORES FIRST VICTORY OF THE YEAR AT PHOENIX
Kurt Busch won for the first time since his New Hampshire sweep in September with Saturday night’s triumph in the Subway Fresh 500. · The win was Busch’s 12th in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series. · The win was the fourth of the season for Ford (Greg Biffle at California and Texas; Carl Edwards at Atlanta) - and marked the 12th all-time win for Ford at PIR, which is the most of any manufacturer at the speedway.
KURT BUSCH post-race press conference…
KURT BUSCH – No. 97 IRWIN Industrial Tools Taurus (finished 1st) – ON RUNNING UP ON THE LAPPED CAR OF MIKE WALLACE AT THE END. “He was able to hold up the group of cars that were running with no tires or two tires, and once you get there, there’s a little give and take, whether it’s gut on the lead lap or a guy not on the lead lap, and so with him holding everybody up, I wasn’t too too surprised that he was going to hold us up, but I thank him for that with holding everybody up so we could catch him. He’s a tough competitor. I think he’s in the top 36 in points, so he’s out there just trying to make a better showing and gain more points so that they could make every race. For us, today was our day, and with IRWIN Industrial Tools on the lid today, we were able to lead a lot of laps. Very surprising. I didn’t know the car was going to be that good a the beginning, and then at the end it started to go away a little bit with an aggressive-type setup. It’s a branch from what we did at Loudon, New Hampshire, and right now we’ve got it rolling on these flat tracks.”
ON HOW HARD MICHAEL WALTRIP WAS DRIVING ON THE HIGH LINE. “He’s a tough competitor, and he branches out and does the high lane first, and sometimes that’ll bite you. Hats off to DEI, they did a phenomenal job today. Once we got to the lead, I backed it down just a little bit in case there were some late yellows so we’d have tires to pull away. When I did that, he started to catch us. ‘Oh, Michael’s running strong,’ and so I had to pick up the pace a little bit, change my line. He was running strong and he was going to drive as hard as he can to get that ‘W,’ and bouncing off that wall and trying to keep it straight, Michael was there. He was definitely there today, and I’m surprised that we weren’t able to pull away with the fresher tires over his older tires, so that shows how good his team was, but our car was set up by Jimmy Fennig, that was my key.”
JACK ROUSH – owner, No. 97 IRWIN Industrial Tools Taurus – JEFF BURTON SAID HE DIDN’T THINK THE NEW SPOILERS ARE AN ISSUE, BUT CAUTIONS ARE UP THIS YEAR. WHAT’S CAUSED THAT? “The cars are obviously much harder to drive; Greg Biffle commented on that and it plays right into Kurt’s hands, and Greg’s hands, and Carl Edwards’ hands, and Matt’s hands when he doesn’t have a flat tire, and Mark’s when everything works right for him. But the cars are harder to drive. When you get around other cars you don’t have as much margin as they did have before, and it depends on how hungry you are. If you’re hungry enough, you go get it.”
KURT BUSCH, continued – “To finish up with that, going through a few changes during the offseason and seeing the aero numbers and to see the way that Goodyear has given us softer compounds, as well as we all might be missing is the impound and what it means as far as setups. Everybody’s got everything under control for qualifying setups when it’s a normal race, and when you get to qualify your qualifying setup, and race your race setup, you’ve got your car better underneath you. Now, it’s a balance of how to find the right combination, and for our team we know that we’re gonna get the most points out of our day if we’re at the end of the race, whether it’s 312 laps, like today, or 500 miles. You qualify wherever you’re going to qualify, but it’s been thrown a wrench in there and I think that creates the element of cars moving backwards at the beginning, who have blistered off a great lap in qualifying, versus cars that have the race setup in and now they’re coming to the front.”
HOW’S YOUR CONFIDENCE WITH TODAY’S WIN? “It’s been a tough few weeks with running into SAFER barriers, luckily, and researching with NASCAR what type of G-force my body’s been through, and you just need time to repair, to rebuild and to re-gather yourself, and next week something else would happen. And so this is a great taste of victory. It’s very satisfying. Jack knows how hard my head is sometimes, and luckily it’s hard enough to withstand some of those crashes into the wall with flat tires or with run-ins. But, you know, it’s part of racing, and we’ve been running well at each of the race tracks so far this year. To pull through Texas, that was tough. Texas really challenges the body, but Phoenix is a fun race track to race on. I’m proud of my team to pull me through.”
DID YOU GET DOWN ON YOURSELF? “In a way, just trying to realize that we went through a good deal of god fortune last year, and I hope that we didn’t wear it all out, so to speak. It would be okay if we were spinning or if we were just having flat tires and not running into the fence, but we were hitting concrete walls. It was very disturbing, but yet you can never get down on things that are out of your control. And you try to control things that are within the cockpit of the 97 Ford. It’s where I like to just get in the car, that’s the best medicine, and so getting in the car Thursday to practice to qualify was great.”
AS THE DEFENDING CHAMPION, HOW ENCOURAGED ARE YOU BY TONIGHT’S WIN? “To get a win as a defending champion, it feels good. It doesn’t necessarily relieve any pressure, but we’ve been good this year. Finished second at Daytona and a few other top-fives – to win at this flat mile here in Phoenix, a track that I grew up coming to watch races and got my first taste of NASCAR Cup racing, it’s a great feeling. It’s a big win for my team and it’s very sentimental value to me, to win the inaugural night race, as well, so that’s what that Polish Victory Lap was, to recognize Alan Kulwicki.”
THE WAY THE 8 CAR AND 15 CAR WERE TONIGHT, DO YOU THINK THAT DEI HAS ITS ACT TOGETHER NOW? “We look at past races here and we see that Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and won the last two, and they’re always in contention when you come to a variety of tracks. One group of tracks that I think they’re struggling on is the mile-and-a-halfs. I think they know that, they’re going to test on it, but you can never count them out. Where are we going next week? Talladega. I’m gonna see the 8 car probably in front of me most of the race, so they’ll be just fine.”
JACK ROUSH, continued – CARL EDWARDS HAD A GREAT RUN TONIGHT. WERE YOU MONITORING THE SITUATION? “Carl did a great job. He was 13th in points coming into this, and speaking of down, he was down over that because he had had a fall from grace going back to 13th. But he had a tire problem of some kind, I’m sure he ran over something, lost two laps and was able to race his way, of course he raced and got one lap back and then he got the Lucky Dog thing and got the other lap. Then, once he started in the back then he worked his way up to seventh, I think it was. But he clearly had one of the best cars at the end of the race, and had he had just a little better luck in the middle he’d have been in the top five, and that’s a definite win for Carl. Whenever he doesn’t run into somebody I’m almost happy no matter what happens.”
KURT BUSCH, continued – “He used to say that about me.” EVERY TIME YOU GUYS WENT ON THE TRACK THIS WEEK, THE CONDITIONS WERE DIFFERENT. WHAT KIND OF ADJUSTMENTS DID YOU NEED TO GET THROUGH THESE THREE DAYS? “You have to have an adjustable race car, and when I want a specific spring in the car we tailor it to our shock, we add spring rubbers, so that we can make the car adjustable during the race. One thing that we expected to happen during the race was when night falls, normally tracks get faster, they tighten up. Charlotte’s notorious for that. Atlanta’s very fast at night. But growing up on the west coast, there’s tracks out here that really don’t gain speed at night, and I really thought this place would, and we were off a little bit towards the end of the race, which is just having too aggressive of a shock package on our car, but it helped us lead laps, we stayed up front and we were able to come through with the better tire cycle at the end. This is right now, I believe, a transitional phase for NASCAR in trying to find the right combination for practice versus qualifying, impound, tires, spoiler, you name it. I know that once we finally find a common thread, we’ll stick to it. But you just have to stay open to it. You just have to adapt and roll with the changes when you come to a track such as Phoenix, because we don’t race here all that often but yet the practices were all jumbled around.”
JACK ROUSH, continued – WITH ALL THE DIFFERENT SCHEDULES, CAN COMMENT ON THE TRAVEL FOR YOUR TEAMS? “I think our guys really adapt well to change. We did well at a number of the new tracks that opened up, Loudon and Las Vegas and Texas, we came out of the box real strong. And with the short spoiler, I look for forward to it because I knew the guys would accept it as a challenge. I don’t know if anybody cared, but I missed Thursday this week because I didn’t check the schedule, and I said, ‘Well, this is the time we’re going to take an impound race and have two days and finish in two days and not have a day off in-between.’ Wrong. So I was asleep at the switch and I completely missed Thursday, so I’m going to have to start reading the posted schedules to see what they’re coming up with. The ideal thing is going to be, obviously, for us to go to two-day schedules for all these programs, based on racing every week the way we do, and not have days off in-between where it’s race track, which we’ve had enough a number of times this year.”
KURT BUSCH, continued – DID THE BUMP BETWEEN YOU AND THE 24 BRING BACK MARTINSVILLE TO MIND? “We were on fresher tires at that point and when I got to the 24 I thought of Martinsville a little bit. I wanted to get by him as quick as I could, and that was the wrong thing to think of. I should’ve been more patient. The car shoved out from underneath me and it looked like I took an aggressive stance on that. And racing the 24, I respect him the utmost, the way that he helped build this sport and he’s a four-time champion and he hasn’t won at Phoenix before, so that crossed my mind as well. So, just one of those racing circumstances to where we had fresher tires, he didn’t and we were able to move on from there. Sorry about running into him, we just pushed, just because I was trying to by him as quick as I could.”
HOW MUCH OF A FACTOR WAS THE WIND? “That’s a good question. At mile-and-a-halfs we’re very conscious of the wind. And today, normally I have my spotter tell me which way it’s blowing but at a mile race track you’re not too worried about it. My guess is that it was blowing from turn two to turn three. Is that correct? And so it pushes the cars up a little bit through three and four, but that’s the normal line to run. But nothing too bad with the wind.”
JACK ROUSH, continued – ARE YOU FINDING IT DIFFICULT ADJUSTING YOUR SCHEDULE FOR THESE NIGHT RACES? “I guess there’s two or three things. At my age, I enjoy being out of the sun, and the idea of not getting my nose burned and my bald head scalded when we’re having a race going on is a good thing, and racing tonight will mean that I won’t fly home tonight by myself, I’ll spend the night, and that’s probably safer for everybody that’s in the air. Anyway, no, the schedules are fine. The only complaint that I’ve got, the only concern I’ve got is getting these things turned around so that we can really realize the benefit to teams by keeping them home when we have these days off, you know, giving the day off on Saturday is not a real gain, and since we only have two days work, we have to work Saturday and Sunday and not Friday and Saturday – Thursday, if you have to.”
KURT BUSCH, continued – CAN YOU COMMENT ON YOUR EARLIER STRUGGLES? “Each of the races there were small things that took our good finishes away, whether it was a parked car on the back straightaway at Bristol or we were too aggressive with camber. You have to continue to look very far ahead at Bristol and I didn’t do that with that wreck. It’s something I put in the memory bank With the tires, we’ve had a great Goodyear relationships and the way that they give us tires to go put these high speeds down for qualifying. You still have to be careful, though, on the camber issues, and so when we go back to tracks in the Chase races, we’re definitely going to be on the lighter side. Hopefully, we’re going to be in contention to run for the win, but we have to be on the lighter side to make sure that we don’t have any serious problems that gives us big blows and take points away during the Chase. We still have to make it to the Chase. We’ve got the regular season ahead of us, but we keep notching little things in the notebook that’ll carry us through and will make us even stronger.”
ON THE PIT SEQUENCE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RACE. “The different strategies played forth and it’s always frustrating when you come in and pit and somebody beats you out with two tires and then you get back on the track and there’s 10 guys in front of you with no tires, and you just hope that the laps end up matching each other with the cautions, and I put all of my faith into Jimmy Fennig to know that he’s made the right decision and we stick with our game plan, and that means not to run the car too aggressively to get back up to the front, and just stick with our conservative tire run that’ll get us to the front, hopefully, in the right amount of time, and then we had a long green run at the end, which I love racing long-green runs because then you’re setup comes forth.”
ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 38 M&M’s Taurus (finished 11th) – “Got great points today, I mean, that’s what we’ve been doing is take an 11th-place car and finish 11th with it, like tonight. I’m proud of my guys. Right there at the end was the best the car was all night. I’m just proud of my guys. It was a great weekend for us. We struggled here last fall, and to come back and finish 11th and gain some points and get back up in the top 10 real good is a great day for all of us.”
WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT THIS TEAM THAT WHEN IT DOESN’T HAVE A GREAT DAY, IT DOESN’T HAVE A BAD DAY, EITHER? “Yeah, we make the most of it. A bad day for us is 11th or 12th, and Todd Parrott does a great job or repairing the damages and stuff like that. It’s a great team, and that’s how championships are won and lost. If we can manage days like this and we can look at them at the end of the year and if we make the Chase this is the reason why.”
CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Scotts Taurus (finished 7th) – “That was unreal. The Scotts Ford was a little bit off. I couldn’t go for the first half of the race, we were too loose, too loose, and Bob Osborne kept adjusting it and right when the thing started to take off I ran over something with the right front, going through the dogleg. Went two laps down, earned one of ’em back, then raced to seventh. That’s the best performance I’ve ever had as a driver. I’m really proud of our team. That’s as hard as I can drive right there. That was it. I’m so proud of our team for coming back. I was really, really down in the dumps there for a couple of laps.”
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Power Tools Taurus (finished 42nd) – “I think we blew a right-front tire. Didn’t have any problems with it all day. We were running pretty decent early. We were going to be about a fifth-, anywhere from a fourth- to seventh-place car today and just popped a tire.”
A PROBLEM WITH TIRE PRESSURE? “I don’t think so. Actually, we had more air in the right front that run than any other run, we just got done putting air in the right front. I don’t know if we ran something over and blew a tire. It felt like we just popped a tire. But it’s disappointing. It was a hard hit, wrecked our good car, and another bad finish.”
GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus (finished 41st) – “Just got crashed on pit road. The 0 was trying to get in his pit box and I was leaving my pit box. I’m not sure if he didn’t see it or he started turning real late or was going slow. Obviously, I didn’t catch him until he was coming across my nose and I got on the brakes, skid the tires as hard as I could. But, a freak deal. Obviously his rear bumper bar went through my radiator, so when he came across my nose it stuck through the right front and got in and took the radiator out and lost the water. We didn’t realize the water went out of it that fast. It ran about three laps and burned the engine up in just three laps. Pretty tough day for the Subway guys. They worked really hard on this race car. We were terrible when we unloaded off the trailer, and that just goes to show me how we will prevail in this championship race when it comes down to the last 10, how hard these guys worked this weekend, coming from off the trailer, being the worst car here, probably, to a car that finished in the top three. Really excited about that. We got good things to come, and this not the last you heard of us.”
IT LOOKED LIKE IT WAS GOING TO BE A VERY GOOD TWO WEEKS, AND TWO DAYS, IN A ROW FOR YOU. “Our program is really strong right now. We unloaded off the truck, we were terrible. Probably the worst I’ve ever been. And then we got the car way better and qualified third and was running out there in the top three, led a couple of laps, but we were continuing to work on it, might have gotten better. But that’s what a championship team is made of is hard work like that, turning the program around for when we show up. Freak accident on pit road. How do you know that the bumper bar of the other guy’s car is going through your radiator on pit road? Just impossible odds for something like that to happen. But, you know, that’s what happens. That’s racing. We go on to next week and see if we can win.”
RICKY RUDD – No. 21 U.S. Air Force/Motorcraft Taurus (finished 34th) – “We were just a victim, you know? There’s not a lot you can do about it. We weren’t that good today. Before all the wrecks we were a 20th-place car, I guess. I don’t know what the deal is, we just never got going.”
