Food City 250 - Kyle Busch Notes

KYLE BUSCH
NO. 5 LOWE’S CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO
BRISTOL PREVIEW

KYLE BUSCH’S HISTORY AT BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY: In his first race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Kyle Busch qualified 12th and finished third in the March 27 NASCAR Busch Series event. The finish was Busch’s first top-five result of 2004, and was the first in a string of 10 top-10 finishes in a row.

Q&A WITH DRIVER KYLE BUSCH:

You’re going back to Bristol for just the second time in your career. Are you excited or nervous?- “A little bit of both. Even if we’re lucky enough to start near the front, it’s still easy to have a bad night at Bristol. I’m excited about racing under the lights, though. There’s just a feeling you get when you look up at all those seats. It’s definitely one of the coolest places to race. I’m hoping we can have a good, solid run, and come out of here with a car in one piece and a top-10 finish. A top-10 finish at Bristol is almost like winning anywhere else.”

Two races, two wins. Do you feel like the team is back on track?- “I can honestly say we never felt like we were off track. If you look at all the races where we didn’t finish well, we still ran well, but something always seemed to happen. We just needed a little luck to go our way, and I knew we’d be back to getting top-10’s (finishes) and top-fives. Everyone on this team is just so good at their jobs, and they work so well together. All the success we’ve had this year is all thanks to the guys at the shop and the guys at the track. They’re a well-oiled machine. I can’t believe I’m the lucky one who gets to drive these cars.”

You won the Michigan race by nearly four seconds over Mark Martin. How did that make you feel?- “I guess it was kind of boring for the fans, but it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if every race ended up that way. Just to race against legends like Mark Martin and Rusty Wallace is a dream come true, but to finish ahead of Mark Martin, the guy that owns just about every Busch Series record there is, is unbelievable. I’ve watched the tape a couple of times to make sure it really happened.”

Q&A WITH CREW CHIEF LANCE MCGREW

With the high banking and the concrete surface, is there any other track Bristol Motor Speedway can be compared to?- “It’s definitely a different kind of racetrack. At most tracks, you’re focused on aero(dynamics), aero, aero, but with the banking and the short length of the track, aero is not nearly as important here. I’ve seen (Dale) Earnhardt and (Terry) Labonte win races here with no nose on the car, so that kind of says all you need to know about the importance of aero at Bristol.

“As far as the concrete surface, it’s just a lot more consistent than asphalt is. We practice and qualify during the day, but race at night. Usually, you have to take into consideration how much the track is going to change from day to night but with concrete, it really doesn’t change all that much.”

You finished third at Bristol in March. Will you put the exact same setup under the car you had during the March race?- “It will be fairly similar, but not exactly the same. I’ve corrected some of the things that weren’t working for us, and we’ll incorporate some things we’ve learned throughout the season in an effort to be more competitive. I feel like I have a better idea of what Kyle likes and doesn’t like now that we’ve had 23 races of working together. That first Bristol race was only the fifth or sixth race of the season, and I feel like Kyle has come a long way as a driver and we’ve progressed as a team as well.”

You dominated at Michigan last weekend, but only gained 20 points on Truex, Jr., in the standings. Is that frustrating?- “No, that’s how I expected this deal to work. I really don’t expect his team to struggle at any of the tracks we go to. I figure we’re going to have to dig and claw and hopefully get back five, 10 or 15 points at a time, so to get 20 points back in one day is great.

“We’ve knocked around 50 points off their lead in the past two weeks, so I’m very pleased with how things are going. Based on where this team was in the points standings last year at this time, I feel like getting 97 points back is a very real possibility. It’s definitely a goal we can achieve. Again, there’s still a lot of racing left.”

NASCAR announced a new gear rule for 2005. What are your thoughts on that?- “I understand that NASCAR is trying to save teams some money. Let me put it this way, though. If I have a sponsorship that’s worth ‘X’ number of dollars, I’m going to spend ‘X’ number of dollars. If you save me $150,000 through this new rule, I’m just going to find someplace else to spend that money. In principle, it sounds like a good rule, but in practice, I don’t think it’s going to have the intended effect.”

CHASSIS INFORMATION- Hendrick Motorsports Chassis No. 298- Chassis No. 298 is new to the Hendrick stable in 2004. Kyle Busch has driven this chassis to fifth-place finishes at Gateway International Raceway in May, and Dover International Speedway in June.

STATS & FACTS