Roush Racing crew members prepare to load up and head back to Concord, N.C., after Kurt Busch fell out of the event at AMS. Credit: CIA Stock Photo

Busch's blown engine tightens title picture

Kurt Busch had a sinking feeling about Sunday's Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500.

He has that feeling almost every race, but once he gets going, the feeling usually goes away.

Not Sunday.

BASS PRO SHOPS MBNA 500 •   Results •   Standings VIDEO Victory Lane The Hendrick team celebrates an emotional win Three in a row Jimmie Johnson pulls off an emotional win Junior wrecks late Dale Jr. smacks the wall hard, ending his day Engine problems Kenseth becomes second Roush driver to lose engine Transmission troubles Gordon develops gear problems on Lap 179 Pit problems Sadler damages his steering after contact on pit road Race tightens Points leader Kurt Busch loses his engine on Lap 53

And now, after Busch blew an engine after only 52 laps, the Nextel Cup points standings is as tight as Bush vs. Kerry.

Even with a "conservative" approach to Sunday's race, Busch left Atlanta Motor Speedway without a liberal points lead.

Thanks to some good luck over the last three races, Busch had built a 96-point lead. That's not commanding, but it was comfortable.

Still, Busch had a funny feeling something was wrong. Six finishes of sixth or better in the Chase for the Nextel Cup had him on edge, wondering when the bad race was coming.

Nearly every other driver in the Chase had at least one poor finish, one "mulligan." Would bad luck strike us, Busch thought.

"It's one of those things where you can't forecast things," Busch said. "You just race. Getting into speed is what we needed to do. It's just one of those feelings where you didn't think it was going to help us out.

"You get it every race and you overcome it every race. We just weren't able to overcome it. Just one bad circumstance under the hood that we couldn't fix today."

Kurt Busch was saddled with his worst finish of the year.

As it turned out, the loss of points wasn't as bad as it could have been. Second-place Jeff Gordon broke a rear-end gear and finished 34th, while third-place Dale Earnhardt Jr. crashed with 15 laps to go and was 33rd.

Busch now leads race winner Jimmie Johnson by 59 points, with Gordon third (minus-72), Mark Martin fourth (minus-81) and Earnhardt Jr. fifth (minus-98).

Busch hasn't had a single engine failure all season with the new Yates/Roush program, but crew chief Jimmy Fennig needed only one look at the ugly colors coming from the engine in the No. 97 to know their day was done.

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"All right," Fennig said as his crew scrambled around the engine bay. "Put it in the truck."

With that, Busch was off to the truck, too, to change clothes and head home early.

"Coming off of Turn 4, it just sputtered and acted as if it dropped a cylinder or lost an ignition box," Busch said. "We tried to do the things inside the car to alleviate our problem, and it was something more catastrophic."

Busch said his car had a "conservative" gear so the engine wouldn't turn too many rpms, and the tires had high pressures so they wouldn't wear too fast.

"We didn't risk anything," Busch said. "And we worked our way into the top 10 with those conservative settings."

But it didn't matter.

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"We haven't had any type of problem like this all year," Busch said. "Doug Yates has done an awesome job, as well as Jack, going to that program. We haven't had any problems. It's tough to have that right now."

Busch wound up 42nd in Sunday's race, as he dropped out moments after younger brother Kyle headed to the garage with a broken timing belt.

"It's our one bad race," Busch said. "You can have four bad races if everybody has four bad races. Right now, the 24 has been decent at most of the racetracks, as well as the 8 -- but they had a problem last week.

Kurt Busch Credit: Autostock

"But this is the kind of deal where everybody made the race today. We didn't have many guys that were going to take their laps and pull in.

"This is going to put us in that 40th bracket. We're not going finish 33rd or have a decent finish out of it. We're going to be pretty far back.

"It's a tough blow, but we're going to put our body armor on next week and do the best we can for Phoenix."

Busch had confidence his team would be able to bounce back, and even if he doesn't hold on to the points lead, he'll still be in the thick of the battle.

"We've done an awesome job for six weeks," Busch said. "We stumbled this week. Three more to go. They're great racetracks for us. I thought this one was going to be good to us. You just have to race as hard as you can every race.

"It's tough the ghosts and goblins got us today. An unfortunate circumstance. We've had six excellent, and now we need three superior races to get back in this deal."