Kurt Busch and Miller Lite Team Ready for Texas Challenge
FORT WORTH, Tex. - Miller Lite Dodge driver Kurt Busch and
his Pat Tryson-led No. 2 Penske Racing Team head into this weekend's action
at Texas Motor Speedway hoping to continue the level of competitiveness
they've shown on all the other intermediate tracks so far this season.
"We've really shown the spark we need on the intermediate tracks so far this
season and we hope to continue that at Texas this weekend," said Busch,
currently third in the NASCAR Sprint Cup point standings, trailing leader
Jeff Gordon by 132 points after six races. "The intermediate tracks make up
half of the Chase races, so it's imperative that we really have our program
where it needs to be on that tracks.
"Just like I was telling someone last weekend, we're currently in the most
important stretch of races during the season," said Busch, the 2004 series
champ who'll be making his 115th start driving for legendary owner Roger
Penske in Sunday's Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. "Including
Martinsville, six of the next eight races will be tracks where we'll return
for Chase races this fall.
"I honestly feel like we have a good handle on our intermediate track
program, but we have to look at the Texas race this weekend as another big
challenge in proving that," said Busch, who won in the series' most recent
intermediate track race, the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on
March 8. "Pat (Tryson, crew chief) and the guys have been putting some great
race cars out there, Dave Winston and the engineering department have made
so much progress and the new Dodge engines have had plenty of power in those
races.
"We're still playing catch-up to the Hendrick teams and the Gibbs teams on
the short tracks, but our organization is committed to doing whatever it
takes to get that end of the program up to where it needs to be," said
Busch. "Martinsville is the only short track race during the Chase, so we
know the importance of improving before we get back there in October."
While Busch points to his team's need for improvement on the short tracks,
the statistics show their efforts are already on a positive trend. Their
finishes of 11th at Bristol and 18th at Martinsville this season are the
best during that two-race stretch since the introduction of the COT model.
Busch and crew finished 29th and 12th in the 2007 season and 12th and 33rd
last year.
"I'll say this about the short tracks we've been on recently and that's the
fact that we were stronger than what the numbers show and that's promising,"
Tryson said on Tuesday morning from the team's Mooresville, N.C.,
headquarters. "Remember that we got in a crash early in the Bristol race and
tore up the front end of the car. We'll never know how strong that car was.
With the rain we had at Martinsville, we had to take a stab at the race
setup and think we could have been better at getting a car Kurt could drive
when the track got rubbered up.
"Anyhow, that's all behind us now and we're putting the total focus on
getting prepared the best we can for Texas this weekend," continued Tryson,
who'll be serving as Busch's crew chief for the 64th race this weekend
during the Texas race. "We'll be looking back at our notes from California,
Las Vegas and Atlanta heading into this weekend. We'll have good baseline
qualifying and race setups ready to massage when practice begins on Friday.
"We'll be bringing a brand new car out there, our (PRS-) 605 Miller Lite
Dodge Charger," continued Tryson. "It's another one of the new-generation
chassis that we started producing earlier this year. We had the first of the
new '600 Series' cars at Bristol and we'll never know just how strong that
car was. After getting her damaged pretty bad early on in the race, Kurt was
still able to finish 11th with it. If we don't roll out another new car for
Dover, we'll probably race the '600' again there.
"A lot of people were asking if we were going to run the Atlanta
race-winning car (PRS-594 named "Hot Rod") this weekend at Texas," said
Tryson. "We've convinced that it'll be a better fit for Charlotte (Lowes
Motor Speedway), so the next time we'll bring that car out will be for the
600 (Coca-Cola 600 on May 24 at LMS).
"We're hoping we can be equally as strong at Texas as we were at Atlanta,"
Tryson concluded. "But dominant days like that are so rare in our sport
today. If we can be just 90 percent as competitive out there this weekend,
we'll be contending for the win."
-credit: pr
