Kurt Busch Wants to Even the Score with Brother Kyle and Las Vegas Win
When Kyle and Kurt Busch had their media availability scheduled back-to-back on Friday afternoon it became family hour.
[media-credit id=41 align=”alignright” width=”290″]
[/media-credit]The two tell their tales well. From growing up and going into different racing directions to competing against each other when they could, both have come a long way. And depending on whom you ask, you’ll get different versions of whose better and who won the most races.
Kurt will even tell you that their father told him he had to let Kyle win every once in a while. Being the older brother though, that was hard to do. Good thing that was then and this is now, there’s no way either one would lift for the other.
Reaching the highest level in NASCAR, the Sprint Cup Series, there’s no one they’d rather beat than each other. Family members competing against each other in NASCAR is nothing new, the Busch brothers are the latest to do so and come to Las Vegas with a little more than bragging rights on the line.
In 2009 Kyle won the Daytona 500 of the family, capturing the win in their hometown at their home track. Kurt hasn’t been a slouch here either, making it no surprised that the two are favorites heading into Sunday. It’s also not surprising that it’s a race that’s looked forward to.
“Coming out here to the hometown is always exciting,” said Busch. “There’s a lot of friends and family, the exciting part just being in the hometown.”
While the Kobalt Tools 400 will only be the third race of the season, the two sit atop the Cup Series point standings and ready for a family battle for the championship. While Kurt sits behind his brother an argument can be made that he’s one of the drivers that is off to the best start of the 2011 season.
After going two-for-three in Daytona, a fifth in Daytona and an eighth place last weekend in Phoenix, Busch heads into Vegas with one thing on mind: even the score with his brother.
“The fact that he’s won here, yeah it stings a little bit,” said Busch about little brother Kyle.
“I’ve been on pole, he’s been on pole here. It’s Vegas. It’s one of the top five marquee events of the year. For Daytona, Indy, Charlotte, I think Vegas ranks up there with a lot of guys. With him winning here it was great for our family and all the friends that have supported us over the years. I just want to be able to do it as well.”
Being a past champion, something Kyle has yet to accomplish, there comes a time when it seems there’s not a lot left for the driver to accomplish. Not for Busch, he’s never won the Daytona 500 or the Brickyard 400 and he does want to, but winning at Las Vegas would just mean more. If he is to do so on Sunday it’ll have to come after saying working on what he says is a No. 22 Shell / Pennzoil Dodge that was “off” in practice.
“You’ve got to get through the bumps that we’ve been struggling with in Turn 1 and 2,” said Busch
“You also have to have a car that doesn’t burn off the front tires which we might struggle with on Sunday. We’ve definitely got our work cut out for us on what we can do to improve our car.”
The hope is that their finish on Sunday will propel the team into a season in which they’ll be championship contenders.
“Hopefully, we leave here with a solid finish knowing that we’ve accomplished something special. It’s only three races in. There’s still a long way to go. I always look at the season as the first seven to nine races on where you rank; after that point in the season is how you’re going to settle in for the long summer runs.”
While that sounds great on paper, this is a race he badly wants to win. In order to do so, Busch said his team will be making sure they do and use everything they learned from this race last year over the course of this weekend. He won the pole with a new track record but finished a disappointing 35th last year.
This Sunday Kurt will start behind Kyle on the starting grid. It will make for a long and interesting day as he tries to not only get his Vegas win but keep Kyle from getting another. It shouldn’t be too hard because as Kurt says, whenever it comes to a battle with Kyle, big brother always wins because he know more.
CHEVY NSCS AT LAS VEGAS: Ryan Newman Press Conference Transcript
NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES
KOBALT TOOLS 400
LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
March 4, 2011
RYAN NEWNAN, NO. 39 HAAS AUTOMATION CHEVROLET, met with members of the media at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and discussed the start to his season, the amount of crashes so far this season and other topics. Full transcript:
TALK ABOUT THE START OF YOUR SEASON: “It is the best two-race start to the season since my Daytona 500 victory in 2008. This just really proud to get started better. I think we have done a good job so far of carrying a good run in the last 10 races of last season into the off season and turning that into a good start to the season. That isn’t easy to do. Maybe Carl Edwards is doing it just a little bit better than us. Ultimately it has been a lot of fun to start. We led the most laps at Daytona which was a great feat for us as a team. I think it was the first time for me at a restrictor plate track and the first time for me at Stewart-Haas as far as leading the most laps I think. A good solid top-five finish at Phoenix. That is three top-fives in a row at that race track. Just proud of the effort the guys have put in during the off season and all the sponsors for giving us the opportunity to come back and do what we love.”
IS THIS THE FIRST TEST FOR THE NEW NOSE? “I honestly haven’t noticed any difference in the way the car drives aerodynamically or physically as far as hitting the race track with the new nose compared to the old nose. This new nose is supposed to be more rigid but in saying that, I wouldn’t have known any difference whatsoever and I don’t know many drivers that I have talked to would say anything any different.”
IS ALL THE EARLY AGGRESSION AND CRASHES A TREND GOING? “It is like you know that there is going to be like 185,000 people leaving the race track on Sunday but we are all going to try to get to the airport first. We know there is going to be traffic but we still try to do it fast. We honk our horns, we cut people off, it is just the way it is. Honestly, I don’t what happened. I don’t know if it was having Saturday just qualifying and more time to think about the race. I honestly think that what happened was NASCAR announcing the mandatory caution at 40 laps changed the strategy for some teams and we saw some guys that didn’t pit and stayed out and guys that were running up front were in turn running 15th and were trying to get everything back in the first couple of laps. It felt like green-white-checkered restarts at Martinsville or Richmond or Daytona for that matter sometimes every restart we had there at Phoenix for the first five or six. It was literally crazy. I don’t know how we didn’t have more crashes than what we did. I mean, the big crash that happened was because the tailpipes cut down the tire which was a freak of instance I guess you could say. It was chaotic was the best word you could use to describe the racing for the first 65 laps.
“Honestly I don’t know if it was because of that competition caution and the way things played out then maybe it will be different. I don’t know. I hope we all kind of learned from the chaoticness, which I think is a word; I tried to use it in Scrabble on the way here-chaoticness. I think that.I know we can do a better job than we did there. I don’t know if we all will hold up to our potential.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON MARTINSVILLE? “I like it. I don’t know why it is being the biggest guy in the garage, I’ve never had one of those hotdogs before. (LAUGHS) I like the racing. I like the fact that you have to really modulate that third pedal that we don’t typically use as much, which I think makes it an exciting race for us drivers. The history of the sport, just going back to the days of the modifieds. Bobby (Hutchens, Stewart-Haas competition director) has shared some stories with me of his dad racing there in a modififed and getting up on the fence and climbing the walls, stuff like that. It is the kind of racing that we still do that is where we all came from. Whether it was stock cars or modifieds or open wheel cars, the short track, hard on the brakes, small tight half-mile racing I think 95% of the people in the garage still appreciate.”
About Chevrolet: Founded in Detroit in 1911, Chevrolet celebrates its centennial as a global automotive brand with annual sales of about 4.25 million vehicles in more than 140 countries. Chevrolet provides consumers with fuel-efficient, safe and reliable vehicles that deliver high quality, expressive design, spirited performance and value. The Chevrolet portfolio includes iconic performance cars such as Corvette and Camaro; dependable, long-lasting pickups and SUVs such as Silverado and Suburban; and award-winning passenger cars and crossovers such as Spark, Cruze, Malibu, Equinox and Traverse. Chevrolet also offers “gas-friendly to gas-free” solutions including Cruze Eco and Volt. Cruze Eco offers 42 mpg highway while Volt offers 35 miles of electric, gasoline-free driving and an additional 344 miles of extended range. Most new Chevrolet models offer OnStar safety, security and convenience technologies including OnStar Hands-Free Calling, Automatic Crash Response and Stolen Vehicle Slowdown. More information regarding Chevrolet models can be found at www.chevrolet.com ce5&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.chevrolet.com%2f> .
