Kurt Busch Starting Fourth In Sunday's Battle At Pocono
June 4, 2010
LONG POND, Pa. (June 4, 2010) – Miller Lite Dodge driver Kurt Busch will start Sunday’s Gillette Fusion ProGlide 500 from the fourth position after turning in a lap of 53.266 seconds (168.963 mph) in this afternoon’s qualifying session here at Pocono Raceway.
“Vortex, baby…it’s the Vortex!” Busch responded to crew chief Steve Addington on the team radio only seconds after crossing the timing lights and completing his qualifying lap in his Miller Lite “Vortex” Dodge Charger. The team debuted the color scheme highlighting sponsor Miller Lite’s new state-of-the-art “Vortex Bottle” in the Sprint All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway two weeks ago in winning fashion. They came back with the same “paint job” last weekend at the same track and won the prestigious Coca-Cola 600. After that success, Busch, team and sponsors decided to continue with their “Vortex Power” this weekend here at Pocono.
“It’s a great lap and we’ll take it,” Busch said, after picking up almost seven-tenths of a second from his 10th-fastest lap in practice and having that acknowledged on the team radio by engineer Dave Winston after making his run. “I felt like I lost a little bit in Turn 1. I got in there nice, got to the gas early, but couldn’t plant it full throttle because the car was a little loose. We’ll take it. We’re running well right now. The package we have right now gives me good confidence in the car and Steve Addington and my guys are doing a great job.”
Busch’s younger brother, Kyle, picked up the pole for Sunday’s race with his lap of 53.102 seconds (169.485 seconds). Clint Bowyer took the outside pole with his lap of 53.211 seconds (169.138 mph). Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start third after turning in a lap of 53.224 seconds (169.097 mph), with the “Blue Deuce” driver fourth and Denny Hamlin (53.296 seconds/156.868 mph) fifth. Tony Stewart, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kasey Kahne, Ryan Newman and Jeff Gordon rounded out today’s top-10 qualifiers.
Penske Racing’s Brad Keselowski is making his Pocono Sprint Cup debut here this weekend and qualified an impressive 11th with a lap of 53.476 seconds (168.300 mph). The young charger gave much credit to his 2004 series champion teammate and Busch was ready to comment on that.
“Any time you can help a new driver, especially a teammate, you do it,” Busch said. “He’s a good student, a good listener. I told him to stay high here, stay low there and watch out for these bumps. It’s cool that teammates can communicate like that and help each other. Any time that we can get him up to speed, it helps us on the Miller Lite Dodge as well.”
Penske Racing’s Sam Hornish Jr. will start the Mobile 1 Dodge from the 19th position after turning in a lap of 53.640 seconds (167.785 mph).
Saturday’s schedule here at Pocono Raceway calls for practice from 10:00 a.m. till 10:45 a.m. (live on Speed-TV) and from 11:20 a.m. till 12:20 p.m. (live on Speed-TV). Sunday’s Gillette Fusion ProGlide 500 (200 laps, 500 miles) is scheduled to get the green flag just after 1:00 p.m. EDT with live coverage provided by TNT-TV and MRN Radio.
Be sure to tune in earlier and catch Miller Lite Dodge driver Kurt Busch on ESPN’s NASCAR Now at approximately 9:15 a.m. EDT. Busch and crew chief Steve Addington are set for a “two-shot” interview on SPEED TV’s RaceDay at 10:10 a.m. EDT.
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HIGHLIGHTS FROM KURT BUSCH FRIDAY, 6/4/10 POCONO PRESS CONFERENCE
(Courtesy of Dodge Motorsports PR)
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON COMING BACK TO POCONO? “Pocono has always been a good track for me. I enjoy coming up this way. It’s just a fun part of our season and how it kicks off the summer stretch – the first part of June and then we come back in August. The ‘tricky triangle’…it’s always been that way. Sometimes you think Turn 1 is more important. Sometimes you think that Turn 2 is where you can make up some time. Since we don’t shift here anymore, Turn 3 seems to be important because it leads to the longest straightaway. It just depends. You have to be good in all three corners if you want to have success; you can’t favor one versus the other. With the new spoiler on the back of the car, I’m surprised on how much drag it produces. It’s got our focus, worrying about how to get that spoiler out of the air going down the straightaway because it has changed all the braking zones. I feel like we can drive it a lot deeper in all three corners because we have that much more drag in the car to help slow it down when we do let off the gas; a big adjustment there. That will bring up the issue about fuel mileage and with green-white-checkers, double-file restarts, all the excitement that you can have there, and then you can have six-, seven -wide down the front stretch on restarts here. This track gets really exciting near the end of the race. That’s what we have to fight hard for, get in position for the first 400 miles and shake it down at the end.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE SPOILER, DRAG DOWN THE FRONTSTRETCH AND HOW IT WILL AFFECT TURN 1? “There’s going to be an extreme draft that all the drivers will feel once we get into the race. It’s hard to simulate it in practice. When we have double-file restarts and we’re all packed together for the first 10 laps of a run, there’s going to be some big runs that you’re going to be seeing down the front straightaway. The draft will increase the rpms and we’ll probably be up against the rev chip, so some guys will be close to over-revving; we’ll have to make sure that we take care of that. You don’t want to abuse the car by staying on the rev chip too long, but you don’t want to give up precious speed out on the race track.”
WHERE HAVE YOU SEEN THE BIGGEST CHANGE IN PENSKE RACING OVER THE LAST YEAR? “It’s hard to put our thumb on one department that gained more than the rest. It would be unfair to say that one gained more than the other because they’ve all done a good job. Whether it’s been the motor department, aerodynamics…we’ve been saving weight when we build a new chassis…just the overall crew chief-driver-team engineer relationship is continuing to get stronger every week. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where we’ve gained the most. If we had a B- in one category, we’ve now raised that up to a B+ or A-. Even pit stops; like last week we came in second, went out first after the final pit stop. My guys know how to do it when the pressure is on. With the shop now merged as one with all the IRL guys coming down from Reading and moving to Mooresville, it helps with Roger (Penske) getting around the race shop. Tim Cindric is able to communicate more easily. We’re hoping that there’s more cross-pollination that starts to arrive with the way they wire the cars, the way that they plum it. We can save a lot of extra wiring and plumbing on our cars by looking at those IRL cars. Hopefully, that will cross over too.”
OVER THE PAST YEAR YOU’VE BEEN ONE OF THE BEST DRIVERS ON 1.5-MILE TRACKS. WHAT MAKES YOU SO GOOD? HOW DO YOU BECOME MORE CONSISTENT ON TRACKS LIKE POCONO? “I had one win on mile-and-a-half tracks the first part of my career and now I can’t remember when I haven’t won on a mile-and-a-half. Sometimes you get in a groove for a while. I’ve always had
success on the flat tracks. I’ve been good at Pocono, Loudon and Phoenix. And then you get on this stretch of mile-and-a-halves where the setup and package that we have works really well. You never know where it comes from, you just hope that the trend doesn’t stop and you just keep riding the wave. Right now what we need to happen is this setup that we’re running, I’m real anxious to see what we have in qualifying (he was fourth) this afternoon and how it settles in for the race on Sunday because this is basically the package that we’ve run at the mile-and-a-half’s, especially as of late.”
WHAT CAN STEVE ADDINGTON BRING TO THE MIX HERE FOR YOU AT POCONO? “We just have to stay on the cutting edge of our setup and what we can learn on our car this week, we can use at Michigan next week. And then, we were at a road course testing for Sonoma. What I like about Steve is that he is always a step ahead. It’s easy to digest things when we find a new direction when we’re a step ahead.”
