Through the first two rounds of the Chase for the Championship, Kurt Busch has quietly put together a string of consistent finishes that have had him transfer to each round. On Sunday at Martinsville, he was on the road to doing that once again till he got taken out in a late race incident.
Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano tried to orchestrate the perfect restart with 65 laps to go to get both drivers on the bottom of the track, which bottled up the whole field. Matt Kenseth would get to the outside of Keselowski, set to pull up to the outside of Logano, and battle for the win. However, contact would happen between Keselowski and Kenseth, sending Kenseth spinning, in which Kenseth would catch the side of Busch’s Chevrolet in the process.
“I got clipped by everybody and it was just collateral damage off turn two,” he commented. “Our Monster Energy Chevrolet SS was where we needed to be. We were running third with a set of fresh tires, and 70 laps to go. And who knew that restart was going to get that crazy. When you are an innocent victim of collateral damage it’s tough.
The result would be heavy damage that would have Busch spend multiple laps behind the wall en route to finishing 34th. Now heading into Texas Motor Speedway and Phoenix International Raceway, Busch currently sits 26 points below the cut line in order to be one of the final four battling for the championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“We put in a solid year and this is a fantastic team, this 41 team,” he commented. “We were debuting a new sponsor in Monster Energy today. Thanks to Gene Haas, Haas Automation and everybody at Stewart-Haas. We are down but we’re not out. We can go to Texas and win, we can win at Phoenix, and we want to get an invite to Homestead.”
Through the whole process, Busch kept calm and composed, something that hasn’t always been the case with the driver known as the ‘Outlaw’. He says that calmness goes back to the strength of his team and the year that they’ve had.
“We live together as a team and die together. We didn’t want to die today,” he said. “We gave it our best. We have had no DNF’s this year and I hope we can make a strong run in the final two races. Really proud of Monster Energy coming on board in the Sprint Cup Series it’s going to be an exciting year next year with them as the primary.”
