Alan Kulwicki 250 - Kyle Busch Notes

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

KYLE BUSCH’S FIRST RACE AT THE MILWAUKEE MILE: Kyle Busch has never made a lap at The Milwaukee Mile. He did visit the facility when his older brother, Kurt, won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event here in 2000.

Q&A WITH DRIVER KYLE BUSCH:

YOU’VE NEVER MADE A LAP AT MILWAUKEE. DO YOU HAVE ANY CONCERNS ABOUT THAT FACT? “No, none whatsoever. I’ve been here and seen the racetrack, so that helps, honestly. I’m going to get a sheet full of notes of what my brother thinks of the track, and I’m going to get up with David Green, one of the veterans of the series, and see if he’ll take me around the track in a rental car and share some pointers with me. I’ve driven a lot of tracks that are similar, and we’ll get a couple of hours of practice, so I think we’ll be OK.”

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU TO HAVE A TEAM THAT’S ABLE TO GET A BACKUP CAR GOOD ENOUGH TO GET YOU TO VICTORY LANE (as they did in Kentucky)? “It’s a blessing to have a team like that behind me. They never give up, even though they could have rolled off the backup with no practice on it and said, ‘This is what you’ve got, make the best of it.’ They worked all night and got there early on Saturday to get it as close to the primary car as possible. They’re awesome. It’s all because of the team. I’m just lucky to get to drive for them.”

Q&A WITH CREW CHIEF LANCE MCGREW

YOU DIDN’T TEST AT MILWAUKEE, EVEN THOUGH KYLE’S NEVER RACED HERE. WHY IS THAT? “There were so many places we needed to test before, we just basically ran out of time. He’s run a lot of short tracks in his life, and (Milwaukee) is a flat short track. We’re going to have to get him as many laps as we can in practice, and I think he’ll be fine. I don’t think it’s an incredibly difficult track to drive, you just have to have a real good-handling car to get around the place.”

BASED ON PAST EXPERIENCE, HOW DO YOU FEEL THE RACE WILL PLAY OUT? “I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff here – cars running out of gas, cars wrecking on the last lap, cars running over the top of each other. This will be kind of different, because we’ve never raced at night here before. There’s going to be some differences. I’m not exactly sure how the track’s going to change from day to night and what we need to adjust for from day to night, so it’s going to be a learning experience for all of us. I feel like we’ve got a really good package in the cars right now, and without a doubt Kyle’s getting it done behind the wheel. We’ve run really well here in the past, and I don’t feel like this year will be any different.”

KENTUCKY WAS A GREAT FINISH FOR YOU AND THE TEAM. DID IT SURPRISE YOU TO FINISH THAT WELL IN A BACKUP CAR? “It’s always a total surprise, because we just guessed on the setup. We could put everything in it that the other car had in it, but the bodies are different on the cars, the chassis are not exactly the same. I mean, you can’t ever build them exactly the same. We didn’t have a lot of clue how it was going to react to the same stuff the other car was reacting to. It was actually a fair bit looser than the other car, but (Kyle) just muscled it home.”

IS THE NIGHT YOU HAD AT KENTUCKY THE KIND OF NIGHT YOU NEED TO HELP WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP? “Oh, absolutely. When you start 37th or 38th or wherever we went across the line the first time and somehow manage to win it, that’s awesome. Whether it was through a little good fortune with a timely caution flag or whatever, we still had to outrun what had been the fastest car there at the end of the race for the win. I just think that momentum is so much a part of this sport, and there’s so much of a mental aspect to it.

“For the team to go from being on the highest on highs with a good qualifying effort and super-fast in Happy Hour to basically coming in off the racetrack with a wrecked car and starting over and being able to rebound as a whole and pull together without a lot of fussing and bickering says a lot about this team. Everybody knew ‘we’ve got to get to work,’ and we did that. Absolutely, that’s the kind of day that championships are won or lost on. We could have very easily unloaded a car and run around 25th all day, but it’s not enough to do that.”

CHASSIS INFORMATION- Hendrick Motorsports Chassis No. 273- Chassis No. 273 is the same car Kyle Busch scored the pole position with and drove to his first career Busch Series victory at Richmond International Raceway in May. Brian Vickers drove this chassis to a runner-up finish at the Milwaukee Mile in June, 2003, and to the win at Indianapolis Raceway Park in August.

STATS & FUN FACTS