Looking Ahead: Kurt Busch
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010fanhouse.com
Filed under: Kurt Busch, Penske Racing, Sprint Cup
LOOKING AHEAD: Kurt Busch, after walking an occasionally tumultuous road in his switch from Roush-Fenway Racing to Penske, is back in championship form — if statistics tell us anything.
When the checkered flag waved into the breeze of the warm Homestead, Fla., night at the season-finale last November, Busch’s No. 2 was showing as No. 4 on the scoreboard. It was one of many finishes in 2009 that led him to his best average finish over the course of a season since his 2004 title at Roush.
Busch made the turn into victory lane twice and grabbed two handfuls of Top-10s (10) en route to his fourth-place finish in the 2009 Chase. Now, he’s ready to give team owner Roger Penske something the extraordinarily successful car owner has never had — a NASCAR Sprint Cup championship.
Pat Tryson, who sat atop Busch’s pit box calling the shots as the team’s crew chief in 2009, will be the biggest change for Busch as the teams roll into Daytona to start the first on-track activities of 2010. Tryson has moved on to head up Martin Truex Jr.’s operation at Michael Waltrip Racing, while Steve Addington moves from Joe Gibbs Racing to lead Busch’s 2010 effort.
Of course, there’s some irony in the fact that Addington was demoted at JGR from the position of crew chief for Busch’s brother Kyle in the second half of 2009.
The biggest change for Busch and the rest of Penske Racing may be the theory of addition by subtraction. In other words, Penske is now the only operation left in the NASCAR garage with support from Dodge — meaning every once of the manufacturer’s effort will be focused on Busch and teammates Sam Hornish Jr. and Brad Keselowski.
Busch showed no signs of slowing down as the 2009 season waned to completion, and it would be quite hard to think he won’t be a contender when the leaves change again this fall.
2009 STATISTICS:
Best Finish - 1st, Atlanta, Texas
Worst Finish - 38th, Atlanta
Top-5s - 10
Top-10s - 21
Total Laps Led - 738
Percent of Laps Completed - 98.5