Friday
2010 Shelby American Q&A with Dodge Motorsports NSCS Driver, Kurt Busch
Press Release
YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT BEING THE GUEST OF HONOR AT LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY’S NIGHT OF CHAMPIONS THIS APRIL: “It’s quite an honor to be named to that Night of Champions and to have the benefit go to the Speedway Charities. This is pretty neat. Just being a racer from this part of the area and seeing this track being built from the ground up over the year and now to part of a champion’s dinner is really neat. It comes full circle. I’m just honored to be invited to the dinner let alone be one of the honorees.”
HOW WAS YOUR CAR IN PRACTICE? “It’s Vegas. To me and Kyle, it’s like a Daytona atmosphere and we want to go out and win this big daddy. He got the chance to do it last year. I was telling my wife this morning that if I’m a little ornery, it’s because Kyle’s won here and I haven’t, but I’m pushing hard to go get it. She understands that and she does (as well). What’s great is that we have the notes from Steve (Addington) and the win last year. We’re using what we’ve built our success from with our Dodge and Miller Lite team and blending that in. We’ve got our work cut out as far as our success, Steve Addington’s success and finding out the most important to work on to get our Miller Lite Dodge in victory lane Sunday. We’ll see how qualifying shakes out. We spent the most of our time in race practice. We’re anticipating rain for tomorrow. When you see a forecast in the desert for 80 percent (rain) that is usually an indication that it’s going to be wet. We feel like race trim is better for us today and we’ll see where our car shakes out in qualifying.”
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Audio: 2010 Las Vegas NSCS Pre-Race Conference with Kurt Busch
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE IMPACT THAT A WIN AT LAS VEGAS WILL DO FOR YOU FOR THE REST OF THE SEASON? “A win early in the season does a lot for the team; the confidence of all the work done in the offseason. It also gives the sponsors the opportunity for cool promotions all year long. Once exciting one (promotion) that we have this year is ‘When Kurt Wins, You Win’ and that’s a chance for any fan to buy a Miller Lite box that has our special logo on it with our race car. You go to the website, call in that UPC number and if I win the race, you get a chance at winning a Dodge Challenger. So the more wins that we have this year, the more Dodge Challenger cars we’re going to be giving away. Miller’s involved. Dodge’s is involved. If I win, everybody wins.
As far as the team goes, Vegas is a big market in the Southwest for selling cars and selling beer. We’re going to do all that we can to win for our hometown crowd and try to boost the down spirits of the economy in the valley right now.”
HOW DID YOUR CHARITY EVENT GO LAST NIGHT? “We had a very positive and successful fundraiser last night at Pole Position Raceway. Over $30,000 was raised between the 12 teams that showed up to compete. We had quality Cup drivers. We had quality Nationwide drives volunteer their time and bring in some of their crew members. And then we had sponsors send some of their executives and employees to join in on the fun, but all for a good cause – the Kurt Busch Foundation – benefitting children in sports through teaching and education programs around the country. It was a successful event because Marty Smith (reporter, ESPN) took a big spill and it should be on a highlight somewhere. The poor guy probably has a neck brace on in the back. It’s going to take a pretty big wreck like Michael McDowell’s at Texas a few years ago to compare to what Marty did last night. We had a couple red flags. It was just everybody competing hard and going for the win.
A guy like (Juan Pablo) Montoya was there…elbow’s up…(Martin) Truex, (Brad) Keselowski, Sam Hornish Jr. and Kelly Bires. The special part of my team was that we had a couple kids from go-karts and late models from the local area trying to build their name up. I know that I was given a great opportunity by the guy that owns Star Nursery here in town years ago. Sometimes it just takes key hits and getting your name mentioned.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT ‘DANICAMANIA’ AND WHAT IT HAS MEANT TO THE SPORT? “It’s been huge. It’s been overwhelming. It’s been exciting. It’s getting to the point that I’m getting asked, ‘Hey, are you racing on Saturday?’ It’s like, ‘No, I never thought about racing Nationwide.’ Well Danica is. I never knew that Nationwide was that special. But, it’s just big for the promotion of the sport. NASCAR can tie it into ‘Danica is racing NASCAR’. But she’s not racing with the big boys yet. We’ll see what she does when she comes up to Cup one day.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT QUALIFYING HERE AT LAS VEGAS? IS THIS A TRACK THAT IF YOU START BELOW 14th, YOU’LL HAVE A TROUBLE ON SUNDAY? “This race track doesn’t seem be as important as others as far as starting up front. I don’t know why that is. Kyle won the race last year from (starting) last place. It says that he started on pole, but he started dead last due to an engine change. Over the years, I’ve qualified well here. I just haven’t raced well here. Qualifying might not be as important here as some of the other tracks.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH CREW CHIEF STEVE ADDINGTON? HAS IT PROGRESSED AS YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT IT WOULD? “It’s going well. The two of us look at each other in the eye and we communicate to a level that we’re not trying to say that his way is right or my way is right. We have a job to do as a team and that’s to make this Miller Lite Dodge successful. We were one of the fastest cars at Speedweeks and didn’t finish well due to a pit call. We weren’t all that fast at California, but a pit call put us up inside the top five at the end and we finish sixth. Then it comes to a day like today in practice where we’re trying to figure out how to adjust on the car. And even the building process back at the shop is going well in my mind. Time is the only thing that makes it go smoother and make it seem easier. One of the things that we’ve been struggling with this year is a lot of rain. Our Texas test was rained out and Daytona had a lot of rain. We anticipated rain on Saturday in California and used a lot of our tires up on Friday. It didn’t rain on Saturday. Again, we’re anticipating rain again tomorrow. We have so much in our notebook that we’re not getting to yet, that’s where I feel like we’re a bit behind.”
- Darnell Communications for Dodge Motorsports, Press Release
Article Tags: Dodge Motorsports, Kurt Busch, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, LVMS, NASCAR, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger, NSCS, Penske Racing, Shelby American
