Can SHR driver build off late-season momentum following crew chief change?
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Team: Stewart-Haas Racing No. 41 Chevrolet
Rank in final standings: 12th
Wins: 1 (Martinsville Speedway in March)
Year in photos: Kurt Busch 2014 highlights
Strides: Busch’s first season with Stewart-Haas produced quick results with a stirring drive to victory at Martinsville, where he fended off track master Jimmie Johnson in the closing laps. The triumph, which snapped a career-worst 83-race dry spell, secured an early reservation for Busch in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs.
Busch also showed his versatility by becoming just the fourth driver to compete in the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. He wowed the IndyCar crowd with a competitive sixth-place finish as a rookie at the Brickyard, but wound up 40th at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the stock-car nightcap after engine failure.
“It seemed as if it took us a little bit to get the newness settled in and once we got rolling, we surprised ourselves with a win early on,” Busch said. “But the summer months is when it seemed to just start to click. It felt like home. We found some strengths, found some weaknesses and I think we’ve made our 2014 the best that it could be and that 2015 will be even better.”
Setbacks: While summer marked an uptick in Busch’s results, the springtime doldrums after his Martinsville victory took its toll on his stature in the Sprint Cup standings. The former series champion failed to finish four of the next six races, triggering an eight-position drop in the points.
Though the regular-season deficit was sizable, Busch started on virtually equal footing after the points reset before the Chase’s Challenger Round. Though he started with a solid eighth-place run in the Chicagoland Speedway opener, finishes of 36th and 18th in the races that followed eliminated him from title contention.
Quoteworthy: “I thought it was great season, to have a win and to run consistently through the summer months and to be in position in the Chase, there’s a lot of football teams that make the playoffs and they get eliminated first round even after a great season. You have to be hot when it counts, and that’s in the Chase, and we didn’t get the job done during the Chase to advance through the rounds. We posted some good top-10 finishes; those aren’t enough in the Chase. You’ve got to go after those top-fives and those wins, and that’s what we’ve got to do next year with the Haas Automation Chevrolet.”
What’s next: Busch played a prominent role in Stewart-Haas’ expansion to a four-car operation in 2014 as the team added two new faces — his and eventual Sprint Cup champion Kevin Harvick‘s — to the driver lineup. Heading into this season, the driver roster remains intact, but a crew chief shake-up has Busch’s hopes up for 2015.
For the final three races last year, SHR shifted Daniel Knost over to the No. 10 team with Danica Patrick, moving veteran Tony Gibson over to Busch’s No. 41 Chevy. The brief audition for next year offered glimpses of promise with finishes of eighth, seventh and 11th to close out the season.
“It’s hard not to be too excited,” Busch said. “It was a great three-race stretch of an average finish of 8.7 — that’s the average finish that it takes to be competitive week in and week out on the NASCAR circuit. Could we have made the change sooner? I would’ve loved to have, to try to capitalize on 2014, but it just gives us so much motivation and inspiration for what next year can bring us.”