Busch staying positive after hard crash at Dover

2004 Cup Series champion Kurt Busch will share his thoughts in a weekly blog during the Chase for the Nextel Cup:

A Tough End to a Great Race

We were set up to have a great finish to the Dodge Dealers 400 when in a flash I was into the wall on Turn 2, setting off a huge wreck. I feel bad for all the cars that got collected behind me -- everybody puts so much hard work into building and getting these cars ready for the track, and it's tough to have one little problem take so many of them out. Obviously, I'm also really disappointed we didn't get the top-five finish we were so close to getting. Two weeks into the Chase and we have a pretty big hole to climb out of, but we're dedicated to putting up our best effort every week and still making some noise in the Chase. We feel very much alive in the Chase and only have to look back at our predicament after leaving Dover in the spring for motivation. We were well out of Chase contention at that point, but rallied in the next two months to finish 10th.

Our Miller Lite team did a great job getting the car to loosen up and handle better from practice to qualifying. Early in practice we were tight and had turned in only the 15th-fastest time, but with the changes we qualified fourth, which meant a good spot on pit road, key to the Dover race. We had a good strategy for our practice session on Saturday and were very optimistic for the Sunday race. As I've said before, our COT program has come so far this season and we feel like the Avenger we put on the track for every one of these races has a chance to end up in Victory Lane.

The Blue Deuce started in fourth and remained in the top five for much of the first half of the race. [Crew chief] Pat Tryson is such a great strategist, and his decision to only take two tires on a Lap 76 pit stop put us at the front of the pack for more than 20 laps. Some guys with fresher tires got by us during a long green run, but we were still top 10 and in great shape as the race passed the midway point. The Miller Lite Dodge had to make a green-flag pit stop around Lap 290, and we sweated out the next 25 laps, hoping it would stay green so the other group would have to come in under green as well. Those stops cycled around and we found ourselves seventh before a series of cautions came out. After a Lap 378 restart, I got around my teammate Ryan Newman and the No. 1 car [Martin Truex Jr.] and was fourth for yet another restart when disaster struck. Our right front went flat and I slammed into the Turn 2 fence, collecting a bunch of other cars in the process. I took a few good hits during the wreck, but all in all came out of it in good shape.

I'm pretty frustrated because we had strong enough cars in both races to be up there with the points leaders. We got stung by an inexpensive part in New Hampshire and the tire cost us in Dover. We're still not sure if we ran over something or if it just went flat. We still have a lot of racing to do, and Pat is the best in the business at keeping team morale positive. He and I had a long talk and we agreed that all we can do now is go into each of the remaining eight races looking to get everything we can out of them. We'll be trying to win poles to get good spots on pit road, we'll go after every bonus point we can get, and we'll try to win all of the remaining races.

We're bringing our Pocono-winning "PT Special" to Kansas City this weekend, and we believe our team can win in that car. We did it in Pocono, and then finished ninth in California after taking a very conservative pit strategy in the interest of maximizing our points day. It's not like the old days when were hoping for top-15 finishes with our intermediate program, we've come so far that we expect top-fives and wins every time out. This would be a good time to put ourselves in Victory Lane.

Until next time,
KB