Friday, May 13, 2011
Dodge Motorsports PR Dover International Speedway FedEx 400 benefiting Autism Speaks NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Kurt Busch Open Interview
KURT BUSCH (No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger R/T) HOW HAVE YOU PREPARED FOR THE WEEKEND AT DOVER? “This has been a good track for us recently racing here at the Monster Mile; a track that you really have to attack with authority. You go out there and have the high banks and you’re really wrestling the wheel and trying to give the throttle pedal all that you can give it. You just have a lot of fun racing this race track. You get out there for a long race, lap times are so competitive. It’s difficult to make up time on the other competitors on the short runs. You set up the car to pay dividends on the long runs, that way you’re not wearing out your tires. We’ve got our work cut out for us. We think that we can get a top 10 this weekend or maybe even better. We just have to continue to make good adjustments on the car.”
DO YOU REMEMBER ANYTHING THAT’S HAPPENED BETWEEN YOU AND KEVIN HARVICK THAT MAY HAVE IMPACTED SOMETHING BETWEEN HARVICK AND YOUR BROTHER? “OK, right! Let’s congratulate Regan Smith on his win last week; I don’t think he’s gotten any coverage whatsoever (laughs). He did a great job to win that race. Congratulations to Furniture Row Motorsports.
“For that issue, I’d say who hasn’t (Kevin) Harvick had an issue with. Everybody has had run-ins. I’ve had run-ins. (Greg) Biffle has had run-ins. You name it and everybody has had run-ins with other guys. I mean, who knows? The way that rivalries are started is from having heated issues out on the race track time and time again. We’ve seen that with guys like Rusty (Wallace) and DW (Darrell Waltrip). We’ve seen that with the Allisons and (Cale) Yarborough. We’ve seen it over the years. It’s nothing different; what we’re rolling through now is what we went through then.”
IS IT MORE OF AN EFFORT TO KEEP YOUR COOL IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT AT DOVER? “Yeah, things happen here so quickly and you’re really fighting the car all race long. Just like me and Tony Stewart a few years back, it takes that one little trip of the trigger and it seems like driver’s fuses are shorter here just because the track demands that much more from the driver.”
YOU MENTIONED LAST WEEK THAT YOU WERE GOING TO TURN YOUR RADIO OFF DURING THE RACE? DID YOU LEARN SOMETHING FROM RICHMOND? “Yeah. Each week is a chance to learn something new. As a driver, the day that you stop learning something, it’s the day that you’re not moving forward. It’s now a better understanding throughout the team on where were going for a direction and what I have to do inside the cockpit to be a team leader and to give us the best result each week out on the track. When I got into the hauler after the race, the team engineer apologized profusely because they put the wrong set-up in the front end of the car. I didn’t know that. We didn’t know that during the race. I didn’t know it, (but) they knew it during the race. It was a tough battle all race long to have the wrong set-up in the car. Things like that happen. I handled it the best way that I could with the guy and said, ‘Hey, people make mistakes’.”
WITH THE EARLY-SEASON STRUGGLES, DO YOU GO INTO CHARLOTTE WITH A POSITIVE ATTITUDE BASED OFF YOUR SUCCESS THERE LAST SEASON? “I don’t see why not. I think it’s a great opportunity to go to the All-Star race and test some things out. We were at Gresham Motorsports Park this week and ran 530 laps – 10 sets of tires. I ran the most laps in today’s practice. You’re going to see a quantity of laps from me coming up here in the next few months.”
CAN YOU EXPAND ON TOM GERMAN’S DEPARTURE FROM PENSKE RACING? “There’s no departure. From what I understand, he’s going to MIT to pursue his Master’s Degree; I’m not quite sure exactly. Timing is interesting on things and it means that my voice has been heard through the Penske organization.”
KB
