Busch made the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup last season, carrying a single-car organization into the playoff for the first time, despite a winless season for the Furniture Row Racing outfit. This, though, is a totally different dynamic — Busch is joining two proven race winners on a team that claimed the championship in 2011, lifting the bar of expectations considerably higher. At Furniture Row, making the Chase was a dream realized. At SHR, it’s a mandate from the top.

Of course, that’s what Busch has been working back toward since the former premier-series champion split with Team Penske following the 2011 campaign. The past two seasons have seen a gradual climb, first with sponsor-strapped Phoenix Racing, and then with a Furniture Row outfit that had never been much of a factor until Busch slipped into the seat. Now at SHR, one of NASCAR’s elite drivers is once again with an elite team, and it’s not difficult to envision a return to the form that saw Busch win 24 races and a title during a decade split between Roush and Penske.

"We know that success needs to be obtained," Busch said. "(Crew chief) Daniel Knost said to me the other day, ‘I don’t want to let you down.’ I said, ‘Don’t think of it that way. Think of it as, we know where we need to be by the cutoff for the Chase. We know where we are right now. Let’s just draw a nice, linear line on how we’re going to get there. And we’re going to have to be ready by the time the Chase starts.’ So it’s been nice, with our goals that we’ve set."

Twelve months ago with the No. 78 team, making the Chase was a goal in and of itself — now it’s the baseline. Busch’s addition as SHR’s fourth driver was sudden, with co-owner Gene Haas hatching the deal in late summer as Stewart was recovering from a broken leg suffered in a sprint car crash that sidelined the three-time champ for the rest of the year. The move required a rapid expansion, beyond the additional garage space expected to be complete by mid-summer. There have been a lot of moving pieces at SHR over the past six months, but they don’t change the fact that for the first time in three seasons, Busch enters the year with legitimate championship hopes.

The enthusiasm for that is evident. Busch was at the SHR facility the Monday after Champions Week, the first day he was contractually able. His shop crewmen are the same ones who last year supported Ryan Newman, and Knost moves up to crew chief after working as race engineer on the old No. 39 team. Upcoming tests are slated for Nashville and New Smyrna. Former crew chief Matt Borland has moved back to oversee the engineering staff, returning to the position he held prior to the organization’s performance dip last season.

"What I’ve seen is, there’s this internal drive right now that’s difficult to explain," Busch said.

That certainly extends to the drivers — four hard-nosed and sometimes hard-headed competitors who represent some of the more combustible personalities assembled under one roof. And yet, Busch and Harvick developed a working relationship last season due to the alliance between their former teams Furniture Row and Richard Childress Racing. He and Patrick struck up a friendship during Champions Week. He got to know Stewart better during the long weeks when the team co-owner was recovering from his broken leg.

"Seeing him a the hospital, seeing him at his house recovering, spending time with him at-track when he wasn’t racing — I got to learn a whole different Tony, versus the competitor Tony I had always raced against," Busch said. "So the timelines worked out really well."

There are a lot of people waiting to see how the four SHR drivers work together, but Busch isn’t one of them. A decade ago, such a grouping might not have been possible — but times change. "We can all be in this situation now with what we’ve all been through, as far as our age, and what we’ve all been through on the track and off the track," Busch said. "All of us are in a good spot in our careers to do this. That’s what I see. We couldn’t have done this a few years back."

He believes the situation at SHR is similar to 2012, when he teamed with his younger brother Kyle on a Nationwide program, and many predicted the worst. "I got the same peppering of questions — aw, it’s not going to work, it’s two brothers, they’ll be hanging each other by the end," Kurt said. "And we had a mediocre campaign, which would bring up even more of a brotherly issue of why we didn’t have success together — and there was nothing said. Nothing happened. It drew us together closer as brothers. So I’ve been in that type of thought process before."

It helps, Busch believes, that SHR is a haven for grease-under-the-fingernails types who thrive on unvarnished roots racing, something signified by Stewart’s frequent extracurricular activities as well as well as the old-school photos of each driver wheeling go-karts — or in Busch’s case, a dwarf car — back in the day. To Busch, the atmosphere is reminiscent of his time on the old Southwest tour, when it was all about the race track and nothing else.

"It’s the fun part of racing, and working hard and living the life of that racer. Where sometimes you get caught up in the corporate world, or you’ve got to go do this meet-and-greet, this convention show — that’s not the fun stuff that comes with smelling cars, gas burning, tires are hot, you get to feel it, touch it, and be at track," he said.

"Tony’s a racer, and that’s what you see on the shop floor with all the guys that are there. Everybody’s a racer. Everybody’s got a go-kart or a late model or a modified or something they have in their own personal garage that they’re messing with outside of the hours they’re at Stewart-Haas. That was the main thing for me. With the Penske thing, as corporate as it was, as business as it was, it just didn’t feel like we were there having fun racing."

Time will tell how much fun the SHR drivers have this coming season, and how much of the team’s burgeoning potential will ultimately be realized. There is no doubt, though, what Busch is capable of, even with a single-car team that’s a notch below the best in the sport. There is no doubt what SHR is capable of when the vehicles are right and the drivers are comfortable. Combined? The outcome may indeed turn out to be combustible, just not in the manner everyone seems to think.

"I feel like I have so many weapons in my arsenal now," Busch said. "… Just having so many pieces of the puzzle already sitting there, it’s going to be easier to put them in place."

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Gordon shared that he’d just shaved a 3-week-old beard that he joked was more gray than black. He’d just returned from a European holiday with family traveling through France and his wife Ingrid’s native Belgium.

Judging by the photos he posted on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, the family took in all the great sites: The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, cafes on the Champs-Elysees and castles in the countryside.

Gordon also included an up-close photograph he took of Leonardo da Vinci’s "Mona Lisa" painting that hangs in the Louvre in Paris. There’s that famous hint of a smile — as if she knows something we don’t.

It’s not unlike Gordon.

The four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion offers a similar smile when asked if at 42 years old, he’s contemplating a timeframe to end his great career. He gets the question more frequently, yet his results — six wins and five pole positions in the last three seasons — puts him right in the thick of things competitively speaking with his contemporaries. It’s proof of his commitment, and that neither his ability nor desire has waned.

The fact he hasn’t won a championship since 2001 while his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson has won six in the last eight years, only feeds Gordon’s determination to win another.

"I feel young at the moment," Gordon said, adding with a laugh, "But when I roll out of the bed in the morning I realize that I’m 42 because I have aches and pain that I didn’t have 20 years ago. I’m reminded of my age.

"But when I get to the track, I’m still as passionate and as excited, if not more so, than I’ve ever been."

Daytona International Speedway has been a particularly prominent venue in his body of work with six wins and three poles. Only Richard Petty (7) and Cale Yarborough (4) have more Daytona 500 wins than Gordon (3). He won the 1999 Daytona 500 from the pole position, something that’s only been done nine times since "The Great American Race" was first run in 1959.

He nearly added another pole position to those statistics last year, instead starting on the outside of what was a historic Daytona 500 front row alongside pole winner Danica Patrick.

And good starts are meaningful.

The Feb. 23 Daytona 500 will be significant for Gordon not only because of its distinction as NASCAR’s crown jewel, but because it is the first race of the season.  

Gordon believes the Achilles’ heel in his championship contention over the past two seasons has been getting off to subpar starts, particularly in 2013 when he had as many finishes outside the top 30 (two) as he did top-10s in the first 10 races.

The slow start — three finishes of 20th-place or lower in the first four races — put him in the precarious position of playing catch-up. He made the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup as the 13th driver, placed in the field by NASCAR CEO and Chairman Brian France after the controversial regular-season finale at Richmond.

"For me, it’s all about getting off to a better start and really the last two seasons we have not," said Gordon, whose sixth-place finish in the final standings was his best since 2009. "That doesn’t mean you’ve got to go and win the first five races. It just means try and eliminate the 20ths and 25ths and try to put yourself in position to get those top-10s and hopefully turn those into top-fives or wins.

"Get the points, get the momentum and then run with it."

Gordon says the entire team needs to look at improving its setups. As a driver, he plans to work on his restarts and being more aggressive. And, he expects a renewed focus on qualifying better.

"There’s many thing that we can do to be better even at our best," Gordon said. "In some ways — and Alan and I have had conversations about this — maybe we’ve been trying to get off to a great start and things didn’t go well and we got a little bit behind on saying, OK, let’s get back to the basics.

"I think we’re going to try to blend the basics and some of the new things that we think are going to be successful for us."

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