Despite having to make a second trip down pit road under yellow at lap 149 due to loose lug nuts, Kurt Busch was able to have a solid run at Texas Motor Speedway, finishing sixth in the AAA Texas 500.
“It was good, hard fought battle with limited practice. We had to go with our best effort to get the set-up,” he commented. “We battled through it. It just wasn’t the winning car we needed to try to advance. The way that we had been running we knew we could get close to fifth. We got seventh today so we will take it.”
With practice cancelled on Saturday, teams had to start the race based on the set-up notes that they gathered through Friday’s limited practice and past races. Busch admits that his team didn’t start off the right way, struggling during the first half of the event, but made the right adjustments as the race went on to get stronger.
“We needed to win today, but to finish seventh after all those hurdles we had to jump over, it feels good with the Haas Automation Chevy,” he added. “Everybody worked together to find the right set-up. We pulled packer, added packer, changed every jack bolt, every air pressure and we gave it a good hard fought battle to finish seventh.”
After finishing 34th at Martinsville due to getting caught up in a competitor’s wreck and now finishing seventh at Texas, Busch enters the final race of the third round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup at Phoenix International Raceway sitting 28 points behind the cutline. While it’s possible to mathematically make up the points on his competitors, it’s more than likely the only way that Busch can transfer is by scoring the victory.
“We’ve got to go there to win,” Busch said. “If we would have gotten a good consistent finish last week we would be right in the mix.”
Busch has done well at Phoenix in the past, posting three top-seven finishes in his last four starts.
