| | FIGHTING FOR A SPOT | Struggling Kurt Busch hopes to fight back into Chase contention | |
|  | | CIA Stock Photo | Things haven't gone that well for Kurt Busch this season. After opening the year with a runnerup finish in the Daytona 500, he's fallen off the pace. | | Rea White / SceneDaily.com Things haven't gone that well for Kurt Busch this season. After opening the year with a runnerup finish in the Daytona 500, he's fallen off the pace. Now, midway through the so-called regular season, Busch and his team find themselves 21st in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings.
That's certainly not where the 2004 Cup champion expected to be at this point in the year. Especially not after that strong start.
While he admits that the season has offered its share of difficulties, Busch says he's not worried about living life outside the spotlight.
"I'm not one to go out there and seek it and soak it up when I'm in it or not in it," he says. "For me, it's my race team and the job that I have at hand here, which is to get the Dodge running better so we can be up there in points and have a shot at the championship."
Busch tries to take a realistic approach to the situation, though he is still aiming to get into the field for the Chase For The NASCAR Sprint Cup.
Busch is 177 points outside of the top 12, the group that will lock in to the championship-determining field, with 12 races to go before that field is set. Overcoming that kind of deficit will be difficult. Busch must recognize that, but he's still holding out hope that he can get on a run and make it.
He's watched as others, including his brother, Kyle Busch at Joe Gibbs Racing, hit on something with NASCAR's new car and went on a winning streak in the series this season. Busch hopes that he's able to mount a similar charge. He won at Michigan International Speedway last June and is hoping that Sunday's Lifelock 400 at the track gives him another shot at a win.
With NASCAR's new Cup car being used in all races this season, it seems that a team needs to hit on something special to win, but once it does, the team suddenly seems able to continue to challenge week to week.
"It takes everything to be successful in this sport," Busch says. "You can't just have a good car and a poor driver and expect championship-type results. You have to have the full package. And with this new car, when you get hot, it seems like the team helped that driver get warm and catch on fire.
"… On the flipside of that, [teammate] Ryan Newman, myself, we haven't forgotten how to race race cars, so why can't we find the success that some of the other teams are having?"
Maybe they can.
Busch has rallied from setbacks before and knows what it takes to piece together a solid string of races.
Still, he admits that this year has been far from easy.
"It's a tough battle," he says."There's the good years, and then there's the bad years. A year like this is definitely a character builder. It teaches you to fight from within and to keep reaching and to keep pushing harder each and every week to have a shot at trying to get back into the top 15 in points or top 12 or even just try to crack the top-10 barrier each and every week.
"You're working hard, and you've got to keep things on a level field to know that, hey, you can still do this, everything is going to be fine. We've just got to work through this to get this new car to work better for Penske Racing."
He has faith that can happen. Newman, won the Daytona 500 and is 14th in the standings, just shy of a Chase berth. Busch is confident he, too, can move into that group. All it takes is finding that little something that is missing - and then going out and getting on a winning streak. Busch earned his second top-10 of the season last weekend at Pocono Raceway and sees his team gaining ground on the competition.
Will it be enough?
"I'm waiting for when it's my turn to get hot," he said. "We want something in our notebook to click and to turn our car into a top-five car each week. Maybe it's just around the corner, and I hope that we have a chance to chip away at 12th place in points.
"We gained 70 [points] over the last couple weeks, so that's what we need to keep doing."
| | Posted June 11, 2008 , 5:37 pm EST
Last Updated June 12, 2008 , 7:14 pm EST | | | | | | |
