Hard Charger: Kurt Busch

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Times are a changin'.

For many years, it was hard to win from the back of the field in Winston Cup racing, especially at the short tracks. But in Sunday's Old Dominion 500, Kurt Busch won after starting 36th, a record at Martinsville Speedway.

It hadn't been since Lee Petty, of NASCAR's most famous family, won from 24th in 1959 that a car had been victorious from so far back.

"It's always good to set a milestone," Busch said.

The win was the second of the season for Busch, and both of them have been on short tracks. He won the spring race at Bristol and had to come back to win that one as well after starting 27th.

While the last 91 laps of Sunday's race belonged to the 97 car, it took a ton of adjustments to get Busch's Ford to the front of the pack. So many that he struggled to explain the difference in the car from beginning to end.

"For some reason, the more we worked on our car and the more we freed it up, it turned and hooked up better," he said. "I'm sure some of the veterans can explain that to me. I'll have to talk it over with [Roush racing teammates] Mark Martin and Jeff Burton.

"There are things you do to a race car to make it turn," he continued. "And then there are things you do just because it's the type of day that it is. You just have to get a fine balance of rotating through the middle of the corner and getting that forward bite [grip in the front tires] up off the corner."

It took Busch about half the race to get into the top 10. His biggest move came between laps 200 and 225, where he picked up 12 places in moving into the seventh spot. He was one of the cars that stayed out when a caution came out on lap 206. Most of the leaders, save for Ward Burton and a few others, pitted.

When Busch did pit, his crew made what he called typical changes to the car for short-track racing.

"We did some air-pressure adjustments," he said. "We did some track bar adjustments. We did some wedge adjustments. I think we may have run too big of a sway bar, and that hurt us in the corner a little bit."

Busch raced hard to get to the front and spun early in the race, but managed to avoid the wall.

"I guess I may have pinched whoever it was that ran into us," he said.

The young driver said he wasn't worried about his error because such spins are common at this track, and if the driver avoids going down a lap, he still has time on his side.

It was only a matter of time until Busch grabbed the lead, and once he did, the green-flag run lay ahead.