Crew chief says result felt more like a win under circumstances
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LOUDON, N.H. — Kyle Busch finished eighth in Sunday’s Sylvania 300 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
And he did so with a car that would have looked more at home on the back of a wrecker than idling its way back into the garage under its own power.
For roughly two-thirds of the scheduled 300-mile event, the second stop for this year’s Chase For The Sprint Cup, Busch, 29, kept his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota inside the top 10.
But when Matt Kenseth and Jamie McMurray made contact battling for position on Lap 188, Busch hit the brakes. And Kasey Kahne hit Busch, sending the No. 18 car careening into McMurray, off the track and through the grass on the backstretch.
“It is absolutely destroyed,” Busch radioed to his crew.
Rather than head to the garage, where it was a guarantee that Busch would lose multiple laps, crew chief Dave Rogers called his driver to pit road to assess the damage.
Multiple stops combined with multiple late-race cautions enabled Busch to not only remain on the lead lap but gave him the opportunity to race his way back through a large part of the field.
It was a daring, four-wide pass on the final restart, however, that enabled Busch to go from 12th to eighth on the green, white, checkered finish.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for all the drivers at Hendrick (Motorsports),” Rogers said after what was left of his driver’s car had been loaded onto the team’s hauler for the trip back to Huntersville, N.C. “But Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. calls it the way he sees it; I really appreciate his candor. He made a comment afterward, said ‘man, if a guy’s going to put it on your quarter panel four-wide going into (Turn) 1, he can have it.’
“He gave Kyle a big compliment and Kyle deserved it. He wanted it; he wanted to carry this team to the best finishing position possible and he did just that.”
Of the crash, Busch said he “checked up, but not quick enough.”
Kahne “just drove right through me,” Busch said, but added that it’s likely the Hendrick driver couldn’t see what was going on in front.
“I don’t know,” he added. “We kept working on it, kept fighting on it and put fresh tires on it every chance we could … and we came back for a really good finish, all things considered. And how bad it could have been.”
Team Penske driver Joey Logano won Sunday’s race, and along with teammate Brad Keselowski, earned an automatic bid into the next three-race Contender Round, which begins two weeks in Kansas.
For Busch and the others, Dover lies ahead, and an opportunity to seal one of the 10 remaining points positions that will guarantee advancement.
Fifth in points, Busch is 28 points ahead of 13th place Denny Hamlin, one of two JGR teammates. Fellow JGR driver Matt Kenseth is eighth.
Given the amount of adversity his team had to overcome, Rogers said the end result felt like a win.
The damage raised the splitter several inches off the ground, killing the front downforce and bumper bars on the front were pushed back on the tires.
“It was torn up good,” he said.
“The guys just did a good job of making repairs whenever we could; playing the whole game, flag to flag, and then Kyle just putting the team on his shoulders, picking us up and carrying us to the fourth lane, making a four-wide pass to come up eighth.
“I can’t be more pleased with the effort.
“Everyone dreams of a championship full of roses and good times but the truth is if you’re ever going to win the championship at this level, you have to endure days like today and I’m proud of my guys for doing that.”
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