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closeKyle Busch: 'They suck'
Victory doesn't change opinion on COT
DAVID POOLE, dpoole@charlotteobserver.com
Sunday, Mar. 25, 2007
BRISTOL, Tenn. – Things worked out such that Kyle Busch got a side-by-side victory over Jeff Burton in a green-white-checkered finish in the Food City 500. That included the “thing” Busch drove at Bristol Motor Speedway.
“I said that I wanted to go out and win this race so I could tell everybody how terrible this thing is to drive,” Busch said of the car of tomorrow, which made its Nextel Cup debut in Sunday’s race. “I can’t stand to drive them. They suck.”
That ringing endorsement followed a race in which Tony Stewart led 257 of the first 290 laps before having a problem with his fuel pump. Denny Hamlin, Stewart’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, then led 177 of the next 196 laps before events began conspiring to give Busch his bully pulpit.
The margin of victory was less than a car length as Busch and Burton staged a drag race to the checkered flag off the final turn. The set-up to that finish, however, began on Lap 484 about the time Jimmie Johnson cut a tire when he slapped the wall.
Johnson, who by that point was clearly not going to get a third straight Nextel Cup victory, slowed on the track. As often happens at Bristol, that had a ripple effect.
Stewart, many laps down after making repairs, slowed, too, and happened to be right in front of Hamlin. Busch moved to the outside and swept into the lead just before the yellow came out. He was the leader, but he wasn’t home free by a long shot.
Busch, Hamlin and third-place Greg Biffle chose not to pit for fresh tires, as did Carl Edwards and David Stremme. The rest of the lead-lap cars did come in, though, and it was particularly relevant that Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton were among them.
Gordon had started first but dropped way back with a car that handled every bit as bad as Busch would say his did. Burton had been in the top 10 much of the day, but he got a pit-road speeding penalty that dropped him back to 16th for a restart on Lap 291.
Gordon was sixth and Burton seventh for a restart on Lap 492. Hamlin began losing spots immediately and fell out of the picture, and by Lap 497 they’d finally cleared Biffle’s Ford to get in behind Busch.
On the next lap, David Ragan spun on the frontstretch and that brought out the day’s 15th caution to set up a green-white-checkered. That was not good news for Busch, but the fact he had a teammate in Gordon directly behind him was something of a break.
“I knew that Jeff was going to get an earful if he laid a fender to us,” Busch said with a nod toward team owner Rick Hendrick. “I figured I had a little room there.”
Busch also figured he had some “brownie points” built up with Burton, too. Two weeks ago at Las Vegas, they dueled cleanly on the final lap of a Busch Series race that Burton won as Busch came wrecking across the finish line in second.
“I knew he easily could have moved me out of the way, but I wasn’t expecting it,” Busch said. “He’s a better driver than that.”
Burton jumped to Gordon’s outside as the green-white-checkered began and took second with little resistance. He was on Busch’s bumper at the white flag and got a nose to the inside in Turn 2 and again in Turn 4. In neither instance, though, there was no Bristol bump.
“I could have used the bumper but I try not to do that,” Burton said. “Half the people in the grandstands probably think it was the wrong thing do and half think it was the right thing. I did what I thought was right.”
Busch had the high line and Burton was on the inside in the short dash to the checkered flag. Busch got there first with Burton only up to just ahead of the rear wheel well on the winning car.
It was the fourth-career victory for the 21-year-old Busch, whose brother, Kurt, has five career wins at this .533-mile track. It was the first for anybody, of course, in the new generation race car that Busch couldn’t seem to say enough bad things about afterward.
“It just doesn’t turn,” he said. “For me it’s just not very much fun to drive. It’s hard to race around on the track with other competitors because it doesn’t have a lot of maneuverability. With this thing, when you start to slide the front tires it continues to slide, sort of like you’re on skis.”
Hendrick, who got his 200th victory as a car owner in NASCAR competition, was a little more chipper. “What you have to do in these situations is try to be there at the end…and if things fall your way, you take them and go on,” he said.
