Gibbs team blazes trail of bad luck through Kansas

KANSAS CITY, Kan. -- Another race, another problem. For Kyle Busch, it's becoming a sad refrain.

Two weeks ago at New Hampshire, a suspension joint failed. Last week at Dover, an internal engine part gave out. And Sunday at Kansas Speedway, a fuel pressure problem sent Busch to a 28th-place finish, burying the Joe Gibbs Racing driver a distant 311 points behind Chase leader Jimmie Johnson. For the team that dominated the first two-thirds of the season, those eight race wins and 17 consecutive weeks leading the Sprint Cup points now seem a very long time ago.

"This is the first time," crew chief Steve Addington said of the latest issue to plague the No. 18 car. "There's a first time for everything the last three weeks."

It was one miserable moment in a miserable day in what's becoming a miserable Chase for the Gibbs organization, the class of the field for so much of this year, and now with its three drivers occupying the bottom three spots in the championship standings. The highest ranked is Denny Hamlin, and he's 243 points out. Sunday forced a re-examination of goals.

"A top-five in points," Hamlin said. "That's about all we can do."

And this from a guy who gained one spot in the standings, finishing 11th after wrestling with a poor-handling car. Teammate Tony Stewart was even less pleased after his 40th-place finish, the result of an incident with Red Bull driver Brian Vickers that damaged a front splitter and forced the No. 20 car to miss six laps for repairs. Stewart and Vickers went at it all day, their adjacent pit stalls serving as the flashpoint for three run-ins and plenty of ill will between the two teams.

But it was that kind of weekend. What's happened to Joe Gibbs Racing? Rick Hendrick, the owner of Johnson's car and a man who's been in a similar situation, believes misfortunate has just caught up with them. And it won't let go.

"They just had some really bad luck. I mean, you know, it's going to happen to some other folks. It could happen to us next week in Talladega. You're going to have mechanical failures. You just can't do anything about that. I think they just had a run of bad luck. They had a run of good luck for 26 races. So this thing isn't over. It's not just three or four guys that are going to decide it now. Mathematically, you have an accident at Talladega, it takes out five or six of the frontrunners, a couple bad weeks, they run good, anybody can still win this thing," Hendrick said.

"It's hard when you run good all year. We have done that. We have gone into the Chase, had bad luck, some of it self-inflicted, and then regrouped. You know, there's no way to explain how to do it other than the way they've done it all year. Just go back, work on what they've got, don't change anything, come back and they'll be good again. Tony was real good. Denny was good. I don't know about Kyle, I think he was pretty good in practice. Things just happen."

Especially to Busch, whose snakebitten car began acting up in the early laps of the race. "Think it's a fuel issue?" Addington asked his driver. "That's what it's acting like, yes," Busch responded. Diagnosing the problem wasn't easy. Fuel line? Fuel filter? Were they going to have to change the carburetor? Busch's frustration was palpable.

"Three wide," spotter Jeff Dickerson said.

"Tell them if they wreck," Busch answered, "to take me with them."

The result was a 28th-place finish, in the wake of 34th- and 43rd-place results at New Hampshire and Dover, respectively, in the first two events. Afterward, Addington was still tying to figure out what went wrong.

"We were 25 laps into it, and [Busch] thought the motor was doing what it did last week and was coming apart," the crew chief said. "That wasn't it. It was a fuel issue. We came in, checked all the lines and everything, and couldn't find anything. But we've got a fuel pressure issue. ... We'll just go back and dissect the whole car to see what the problem was, and see if we can find anything."

That was of little solace to Busch, who can only watch as what might have been a championship season slips away -- through no fault of his own. How does he feel about it? "I think it's pretty self-explanatory," he said, "to everyone out there."