There’s No Place like Home for Kyle Busch in Las Vegas
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[/media-credit]Winning at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2009 for Kyle Busch was the feeling of a lifetime.
Busch grew up racing just a stones throw from were the speedways stands and he watched it be built. Dreaming of the day that he and older brother Kurt would get to race in at their home track.
Having done so and then being able to win in Vegas was more than Busch imagined. Sunday he’ll attempt to do it again, starting from the outside of the front row in his No. 18 M&M’s Brown Toyota.
“It’s always great to get back to Las Vegas,” Busch said on Friday. “Just growing up racing outside turn one here at the ‘Bullring’ but to come back to the big track is always an exciting part of our year. For the 18 team we look forward to this race and trying to see how well we can run and of course we always try to put as much emphasis on every race as much as we can, but we certainly like running well here and trying to win this one.”
Busch says he’s expecting good things from his team this weekend. Yet, he’ll be expecting the most from himself. Every year when he drives through the tunnel for race weekend in Las Vegas he does with a lot of pressure on himself.
Pressure to either win or perform very well. It’s a special track, a special place and one that Busch enjoys coming to. His 2009 win at the time was one of the biggest in his career, joined now by the “triple” he pulled off in 2010 at Bristol and winning last year’s inaugural Kentucky race.
There’s only one hometown track though. And for Busch nothing can beat its atmosphere or knowing his way around town better than any other he’ll visit on the Sprint Cup circuit. It’s always a cool race, says Busch and that’s where his focus is this weekend.
Coming off a sixth place finish a week ago in Phoenix, where he led laps and was in contention until a late race pit stop miscue, Busch sits ninth in points. Vegas as always been a decent track for him but last year he finished 38th following a blown engine.
His win though, has been Busch’s only top five finish since the track was reconfigured prior to the 2007 season. In the five races on its new surface Busch has been all across the finishing board: 9, 11, won, 15 and 38th.
A new surface brings new racing, which drivers are still trying to figure out. Busch expects more of the same on Sunday afternoon.
“It’s very different from what it was with the flat surface,” Busch said. “I always enjoyed running on the flat surface. When we brought these new cars out, that’s kind of when they changed the track over too and were looking to make it a multi-grooved racetrack and you can run two, three-wide around the place.
“Which you can do, just the first time here the tires were so hard, the track was so slick and now that we’ve kind of seasoned the asphalt a little bit the tires are able to get a little bit better and we’re able to make those last. The racing’s been getting a little bit better. It’s kind of a crapshoot race if you will.”
From Busch’s seat it seemed that drivers who were good on the old track had a harder time getting accustomed to the new one. Although Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards have remained a constant and Busch feels he’s been right there too.
“It’s certainly made for an interesting racetrack once it was all said and done,” said Busch. “For me I was used to the old surface, so I come out here thinking, ‘Okay, we’re going to Vegas.’ Well, it’s not Vegas anymore. It’s essentially somewhere different, so you’ve just got to get used to all that.”
Busch and JGR shouldn’t be fazed. The company is off to a hot start with all three drivers sitting in the top 10 in points and already visiting victory lane. Hamlin won last weekend in Phoenix and Busch took home the season’s first exhibition race in Daytona, the Budweiser Shootout.
Following his win Hamlin said the company was beginning to get back to being the JGR of old. Dominating races, having drivers in victory lane on a regular basis, just putting together the whole package on raceweekend and stealing the headlines. So far, Busch said he has not been surprised by the organizations early season success.
“I thought that there would be big things that could come out of JGR this year and we’re already seeing some of the fruits from that with Denny’s win at Phoenix last week,” he said.
“That was pretty cool. We ran strong and actually all the Joe Gibbs Racing cars finished in the top 10, including two [Michael Waltrip Racing] cars, which made five Toyotas in the top 10, so we were proud of that effort.”
Busch looks forward to the continued success this year and with he and crew chief Dave Rogers working with the new crew chiefs of their teammates, Jason Ratcliff for Joey Logano and Darian Grubb with Denny Hamlin. A key, he says, will be having all three working closely together in order to benefit all.
Appears so far so good and the fruits of their labor will most likely be shown the next few weeks as the season starts to roll forward with teams getting ready to grade themselves against the competition. For Busch and his JGR team the hope that a little home cooking will send them in a championship direction.
Jeff Gordon Celebrates 20 Years of Racing with Dupont
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[/media-credit]Jeff Gordon has been racing in NASCAR for 20 years now and has kept a solid partnership with sponsor, Dupont, through that time. To honor that partnership, Gordon is running a special paint scheme this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“I’m very proud of it –that’s for sure,” Gordon said. “Just the fact that I’ve been driving in this series for 20 years is one thing, but to know that we’ve had a sponsor be there with us the entire way as well as Pepsi. We’ve obviously put a great combination together that’s worked out very well for us as well as the business for DuPont and other sponsors. It’s something that we’re definitely very, very proud of. I think it’s awesome that they’re celebrating in the way that they are this year by the 20th anniversary paint scheme and logo and we’re going to have a lot of fun.”
Gordon added that he still remembers when he first signed with Rick Hendrick and Hendrick Motorsports and they were going to talk to Dupont about being an associate sponsor. That meeting turned into Dupont becoming a full-time sponsor and seeing four championships and over 80 career victories.
In his career in NASCAR, Gordon has seen a lot of changes in the sport, with this year marking the biggest change with the electronic fuel injection.
“This car was probably the biggest number one change or anything that I’ve ever had to deal with was just completely adapting over to a new car with a splitter, bump stops — completely different aero package,” he added. “Some of the highlights that stick out in the mind throughout the years is just aero in general, mainly just aerodynamics and tires have been the biggest change. I look back to some shots of the car from ’94 and ’95 on the race track and our air dam is this high off the ground in the corners and the skirts on the right side aren’t sealed off. I just think, ‘Gosh, just think how fast we would have gone if we would have known what we know now.’”
Gordon went on to say that he remembered when big sway bars and big rear springs came into effect.
“It used to that you would use all the mechanical grip of the springs and the shocks to make the cars last over a long run and the cars gave up a lot of speed throughout a run so you could manage that,” he continued. “The way we set the cars up were more about tire management and now it’s just all about aerodynamics. I remember that time when it came and that definitely took me a while to adapt to that. We finally did adapt to it and then we won the championship in 2001.”
One of the places that Gordon says hasn’t seen a lot of change is Martinsville, and that’s one track that he has had a lot of success at.
“I feel like Martinsville is that one place that I can go to every time and give good information back to the team to keep us fast throughout the race,” he said. “To me, of all the tracks, the least amount of changes and that’s where experience can really pay off.”
At Martinsville in his career, he has seven wins, 25 top fives and 31 top 10s in 38 starts.
Most recently, Gordon’s life has changed outside of racing with the birth of his two kids, Ella and Leo. Gordon is glad to have had both his children at the current age of 41, instead of when he was younger.
“I got married the first time very young and if I had children at 25 or 26, I don’t think I would have been ready for it,” he explained. “I don’t know if I would have been able to stay as focused on my career. Or one would have suffered more than the other and so I think now I’m able to balance it out, I feel like, pretty well and enjoy both.”
Gordon hasn’t had it all easy off the track either, as with the divorce from Brooke Sealy. However, he says he’s fortunate to have had things go the way they have.
“In my life I have been so fortunate that when things didn’t go exactly as planned, I’ve been very fortunate to bounce back,” he said. “I was fortunate enough to meet my wife Ingrid that she and I at that time wanted to have children. We felt like it was the right time in our lives. There’s no doubt that I’m very thankful it happened when it did and that it happened with her.”
In looking back at everything, Gordon says that he feels fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with the different people he has worked with.
“I’ve just been a part of great teams that have allowed me to be consistent with having that type of success,” he said. “To me, you always hear that success breeds success — to me, as things started going well on the track it allowed me to start thinking about things off the track and trying to come up with the best plan if things go this way. You hope that they go in a positive way and for me they have.”
Gordon will start the race this weekend at Las Vegas in the 16th position while teammate Kasey Kahne leads the field to the green flag.
Target Chip Ganassi Racing Leads IndyCar Spring Training at Sebring
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[/media-credit]It may be a new chassis, but the dominance of Target Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske will look to continue in the IZOD IndyCar Series following testing. At the end of the four day test, the two teams shared the top of the chart with Target Chip Ganassi having the upperhand.
After all four days, it was Target Chip Ganassi Racing driver Scott Dixon leading the field with a time of 51.7932 seconds at a speed of 116.077 mph.
“Overall it was a good day for Team Target,” Dixon said. “We got started late because of some issues, and probably didn’t get accomplished what we needed to in the first part of the day. We made a big suspension change at lunch time, and I actually didn’t like all of that stuff, but we came out around 3 p.m., and didn’t have time to go back on those things, so we stuck with it. We made steering changes and damper changes and seem to find a bit of a compromise for what we had. Today was more a day of learning about the new car and trying to soak up as much as we can before St. Pete.”
Dixon’s quick lap, which saw him be the only driver under 52 seconds, came near the end of the last practice session.
“We did the work on the car and as the sun went down a bit and the clouds came in, the track picked up some time,” he said. “We definitely worked to make the car better as well. I was good to do something for the lads at the end and it worked out.”
Dixon’s teammate Dario Franchitti would be second on the charts with a time of 52.0157 seconds.
“The team always does a good job, they’re very, very good,” Franchitti said. “We’re trying to learn these new cars. We’re trying to learn the new car, what might break on them, where the weak spots are, how to make them go fast. Honda is learning very quickly too so we’re just trying to get through all of this stuff just now. I’m very happy with the two days we’ve had, obviously the first two days for me right from break-in, we had a lot of questions coming in to this test and we got answers to most of them, so hopefully we can put the pieces together for St. Pete and onwards.”
Penske Racing driver Helio Castroneves would end the session in third at a time of 52.1413 seconds.
“Overall it was a good day for the Shell-Pennzoil Chevrolet,” he said. “Chevy did an incredible job. We are still developing the car. Still making little bits here and there. But, for Spring Training, I thought all of the Chevys are in good shape. Overall Team Penske is in good shape. We have to just keep pushing each other. Hopefully we can get what we want for the first race of the season.”
Castroneves is one of the drivers driving a Chevrolet powered car this season, and commends Chevrolet on their efforts so far.
“Chevy is on-board,” he said. “Took the bull by the horns as they say. It is a very good commitment from everyone. Right now we are still working; still developing.”
Ruben Barrichello of KV Racing Technology ranked fourth with a lap of 52.1615 seconds. Barrichello is trying to learn as much as he can as he makes the transition from Formula 1 to IndyCar.
“We were able to run a good amount of laps again today and look at some different setups,” he said. “We also practiced pit stops which will served me well. I was able to see how the car reacts coming in on warm tires and leaving on cold tires and seeing where to position the car, all things that are very different to what I am used to. Overall though we have had a very good two days of testing.”
Team Penske’s Will Power rounded out the top five with a lap of 52.2059 seconds.
“It is clear that it is pretty even so far,” Power said. “The moment of truth is going to be St. Pete. Everyone is going to have what they’ve got. There is no sandbagging or anything. We shall see there.”
Power added though that it’s hard to see where everybody is at due to how unique Sebring is.
“It is so hard to tell this track, to be honest,” he said. “It is a very strange circuit for testing, because I don’t think there is any place we go that is like it. Turn 4 is probably the most representative corner of a street course. Everywhere else has way too much grip, so the car always feels pretty good. I’m not sure what we get out of these tests, but we certainly push the car to the limit I would say.”
JR Hilderbrand was sixth, followed by Ryan Briscoe, Mike Conway, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Takuma Sato.
