Early bird, winner and Disney lover? That's Pat

Pat Tryson doesn't own an I-pod. That's my kind of guy. Old school.

Pat is the crew chief for Kurt Busch. He does have a cell phone, and after Busch won the race at Michigan on Tuesday, Tryson had one very important telephone call to make. Car owner Roger Penske was at the track. So was his No. 1 man, vice chairman of Penske Racing, Walt Czarnecki. His crew was there. But one man was missing.

Tryson and his team flew home on Monday after the race was postponed a second time.

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"It gave the guys a chance to see their family and get some fresh clothes," Tryson said.

It also gave him the opportunity to make a difficult decision.

"I had to leave Jeff Thousand at the shop," he said. "He is such a key ingredient in this organization. I really hated to do it but he had to get to work on the Bristol car. I've known him for a while. He is a great person to be able to lean on; he knows a lot about racing. I really wanted to call him after the race. He was frustrated he wasn't there, especially with the way things turned out. But it was the right thing to do. He is the one getting us ready for Bristol."

Thousand is more than a right-hand man, he's more like a right arm. At the shop he is the car setup guy, a simple description of a difficult job, then he comes to the track on race day to perform a variety of duties. He has been with Penske Racing for many years, and worked with former driver Rusty Wallace. He was one of the few "crew" guys that stayed on at Penske after Wallace retired.

Fortunately Tryson got a hold of Jeff soon after the race, because while the team was going through the post-race media sessions and post-race inspection and motor teardown, Tryson was accepting and returning congratulatory calls, for an hour or two, he thinks, until his cell phone battery finally gave out.

"I was talking to different people, different radio shows, it was all good," he said. "But when we got back about 8 o'clock [Tuesday night] the battery was dead."

Tryson was up at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning.

"I'm an early bird," he admitted

I think that's a class they have at crew chief school, Early Riser 101.

On Tryson's first day at Penske Racing he walked through the shop.

"It was really just a meet and greet," Tryson said.

The next day the team was on its way to Sonoma, Calif. Tryson was the third crew chief of the season for Busch, and the season was only 15 races old. In the previous five races, the No. 2 Dodge had finished in the top 15 just once, and the team was 25th or worse three times. Busch had a couple of tough finishes the next two weeks: 22nd at Sonoma after contact with Juan Montoya and gambling on fuel mileage, then 21st at New Hampshire after he was run over by David Ragan on the final lap. But since then, the Tryson factor has been pretty evident.

Busch finished third at Daytona, sixth at Chicagoland, 11th at Indy, won at Pocono, 11th at Watkins Glen thanks to a speeding ticket on pit road and then the win at Michigan. While we were calling the races on TNT, I said on the air that Pat Tryson said he doesn't deserve a lot of credit for getting the 2 team back up to speed. Wally Dallenbach added, "That's Pat. That's just the kind of guy he is. He will pass out all the credit but this guy is good and he will have a positive effect on that team."

Well, Busch led 175 of the 200 laps in the Pocono win, and snapped a 51-race winless streak. Fifty-one races! That's a long time. In the 15 races BT (before Tryson), Busch had back-to-back top-10 finishes just once (third at Talladega, fifth at Richmond). In the eight races since the Tryson meet and greet in June, Busch has two wins, four finishes of sixth or better, and finished 11th or better in six of the eight races. And then there is that Race to the Chase thing. Busch is currently 12th. (Continued)