NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series: Aaron’s 499, Talladega Superspeedway, 4/28/04
Kurt Busch
Team: No. 97 Sharpie IRWIN Ford Taurus
Owner: Jack Roush
Crew Chief: Jimmy Fennig
Chassis: #55 (finished 16th at Daytona earlier this year)
Kurt Busch on racing at Talladega Superspeedway:
"Talladega is more of a chess game than it is driving. It's a place where you can run 500 miles straight through. It's gone caution free. I've been in one of those races where you just keep digging and digging, do the pit stops, and then you're back out on the track. If you're in the top-five, usually you're single file and out of the three-wide pack - that's something you try to position yourself for. If you're stuck in the middle of the pack, there's not much you can do. You don't want to get caught up in that big wreck, so you have to decide if you want to go forward or if you want to hang out in the back and wait for a pit stop to jumble up the field. Qualifying is important, but, if you qualify up front, you can get shuffled to the back quick if you get into the wrong draft. We'll just see how it shakes up. We have a good car. It's the car we ran at Daytona, so I'm excited to bring it back. We're second in points, it's a great start to our year. We're starting to get into the heart of it and just have to make sure we're in the top-10 for the final chase for the championship.”
Crew Chief Jimmy Fennig on racing at Talladega Superspeedway:
“Kurt’s done pretty well here over the years. We’re bringing the same car and back-up that we took to Daytona, and the primary did really well. We got a lap down there early in the race, but ran with the leaders for the rest of the race, so we know it’s a fast car, and Kurt has proven that he knows how to handle the Sharpie Ford at these superspeedways, so we feel pretty good about it.”
Fast Facts
Kurt Busch is running the No. 97 Sharpie paint scheme for the fourth of 18 events in the 2004 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series season.
Busch finished 11th at Martinsville, but the performance was not enough to allow him to maintain his lead in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series standings. He dropped to five points behind Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Busch has been strong at Talladega with four top-10 finishes in six career starts, including three out of the last four.
Three of those performances at Talladega have been among the top five, including a best of third achieved in April of 2001 and matched the following year in the same event.
Busch has led laps in four of his six starts at Talladega, including the last three in a row.
