Kyle Busch rallies after wreck to finish 9th
Sunday, Mar. 21, 2010
BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Kyle Busch knows that to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup, and eventually win a championship, you must be able to make bad days better.
And Sunday was a bad day.
Busch struggled all weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway and things looked even worse when we blew a tire and slammed into the wall on Lap 264 of 500 of the Food City 500. Another bad finish would have really put his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing team in a hole to start the season.
He stopped for repeated repairs and eventually made his way back on the lead lap and in the final 10-lap dash to the finish, ended up ninth, surprising even himself.
"Things didn't look good," he said. "The guys never gave up and I never gave up and somehow we got a decent finish out of it.
"We need to do some more work for when we bring this (car) back here in August. We want to run better. We did what we needed to do today."
Busch's crew chief, Dave Rogers, called the amazing comeback Sunday "a positive change."
"We've had a couple top-10 cars this year and we didn't get those finishes," he said. "Now we probably didn't have a top-10 car, but we got the top-10 finish.
"There's no magic -- you're not going to come here, wave a magic wand and start winning every race. Chad (Knaus) and Jimmie (Johnson) have been at it for a long time and built a solid program -- we're just trying to follow suit."
Busch jumped five positions in points and moved back into the Top 10. He is 10th, 168 behind leader Kevin Harvick.
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