Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 - Kurt Busch Notes

Carolina Dodge Dealers 400, Darlington Raceway, 3/21/04

Kurt Busch
Team: No. 97 Sharpie Ford Taurus
Owner: Jack Roush
Crew Chief: Jimmy Fennig
Chassis: #41 (Previously raced in the fall at Atlanta to an eighth place finish.)

Kurt Busch on racing at DARLINGTON RACEWAY: "Darlington was a special place for me because of the history of the track and the fact that it gave us our first pole in 2001. I don’t think it ever really set in until the off-season how significant that battle with Ricky Craven truly was at this race last year. It is certainly my most memorable second-place finish, and probably always will be. It was a rare circumstance where Craven and I were both in the same mindset – we both wanted to win, but neither of us was going to wreck the other to get the victory. If that scenario happened a hundred times, 99 of them would probably end in a wreck. But that was the ultimate example of two racers going as hard as they could to win a race. Maybe this year we can beat him by .001 seconds and rewrite the record books.”

Crew Chief Jimmy Fennig on racing at DARLINGTON RACEWAY: “I don’t think the track will be too different with the new SAFER walls. It should be a little tighter in the center of the corners on restarts, but I don’t think the qualifying speeds or lap speeds will be much different than what we’ve seen there before.”

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