KURT BUSCH LOOKING FOR CALIFORNIA WIN TO ADD TO RECENT POLES
Miller Lite Dodge Driver Confident Recent Las Vegas Testing Will Increase That Likelihood

FONTANA, Calif. (Feb. 20, 2007) – According to Bill “Stump” Lewis, chief transport driver for Kurt Busch’s Miller Lite Dodge Racing Team, it is 183 miles between the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway and the 2.0-mile California Speedway here in Fontana.

But Busch, the 2004 NASCAR champion and second-year driver for Roger Penske, is hoping that there is much less “distance” between the two facilities. As a matter of fact, the Las Vegas native is hoping that lessons learned in testing on the Las Vegas track last month can help lead him to victory in Sunday’s Auto Club 500 here in the first Southern California stop on the 2007 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series schedule.

“We’re probably best known right now for winning both poles at California during the 2006 season and we’d love to be even better known for winning both races at Fontana this year,” said Busch, who won this race in 2003 and has three top-five finishes in his nine career Cup starts here. “Last year, we certainly knew how to get our Miller Lite Dodge around there very fast for one lap. This year, we’re looking at what it takes to keep it fast for 250 laps.”

Enter the Vegas test…

“We had two cars there in Vegas – our (PRS-) 78 and (PRS-) 80 chassis Dodge Chargers.” said Busch, whose first, last and only visit here while in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series back in 2000 led to a pole and a dominant win. “While we were concentrating on getting everything right for the upcoming race at Vegas (March 11 UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400), we also looked at it as a test for all the upcoming intermediate tracks.

“The bottom line is that the ‘78’ was really tight and the ‘80’ was pretty loose,” said Busch, who graduated from Durango High School in Las Vegas and attended the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1997, before going racing fulltime. “We really liked the 80 car there and everyone knows the old line that ‘loose is fast.’

“The ’88 car’ is an exact carbon copy of that ’80 car,’ so that’s why we chose that particular Dodge Charger for the Fontana race,” said Busch. “We think that it’ll be just what we need to get the job done – not just on qualifying day, but on race day, too.

“I think that we learned a great deal in the Vegas test that will help us on all the intermediate tracks,” said Busch, who led 95 laps (the most) in last Sunday’s season-opening Daytona 500 before an incident with Tony Stewart relegated him to the garage and a 41st-place finish. “So much emphasis was put on the different track surface while we were out there, but we just took what was thrown at us and made the best of it. Yeah, there’s so much talk of the Vegas track being too fast and all – smaller fuel cells and a different tire – since we tested there, but we still tried to use the test for the big picture the best we could.

“That’s where Roy is so good and I certainly want to point that out,” Busch said of Roy McCauley, his Miller Lite Dodge crew chief. “As much as we tested during the off-season and as many tests that we have scheduled, he’s so in tune to everything that he’s gonna’ get something out of the test trip even if it’s raining and we’re all hold-up back in the hotel. Each and every day, my respect for Roy grows and grows. I’m convinced that all or our hard work is really gonna’ pay dividends this year.”

And this from McCauley:

“We got quite a bit out of the Las Vegas test that we think we can apply to this weekend’s race at Fontana,” said McCauley, perhaps better known for his engineering background than his exceptional performance as a first-year crew chief for Busch last year. “Some of that information I need to keep internal, but I can say that we certainly learned a lot about the new Dodge front end.

“While much of our focus was on the shock packages -- and rightfully so when you think about our performance on the intermediate tracks last year – I think Kurt and everyone on the team would agree that we made a whole lot of progress dealing with the ‘aero package,’ too.

“Without showing our hand, I will say that we were pleased to find more rear downforce and that was an advancement that we were all hoping for with the new Dodge Charger and its front end,” said McCauley, who holds a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Maryland and who Busch quickly pointed out just last week, “is the best man in the garage area to lead me and our team, bar none.”

“The thing about it is that Kurt was so willing to go through our learning season last year. Lord knows that we threw so much at him that it was a challenge, for sure,” said McCauley. “We’ve changed so much on these intermediate track cars and we’re all convinced that those changes will all be for the good.

“With the front-end geometry work and all the progress we made with the shocks – I’m convinced that we’ll see the efforts pay us dividends during the California weekend,” said McCauley. “I certainly can’t get into the specifics, but we’re confident that we will be a great challenger for both the pole and the race win this time around at California Speedway.”

Friday’s 2:30 p.m. (local) qualifying session (live on SPEED & MRN) will determine Sunday’s entire 43-car starting field. Sunday’s 250-lap, 500-mile Auto Club 500 will get the green flag at 12:30 p.m. PST and will feature live coverage by FOX-TV and MRN Radio.

Notes of interest:

--Miller Lite Dodge driver Kurt Busch on the aftermath of the Daytona 500: “It’s definitely disappointing to have had a car capable of winning, leading the most laps and come out of there with the finish we got, but I’ve already come to grips with the positive that came out of all of it,” Kurt said on Monday night from his Mooresville, N.C., home. “We know that we’ve dug us a hole with that 41st-place finish at Daytona and we’ll have to work hard to get out of it. We’ll go to work on it this weekend at California. But, there definitely was some positive that came out of Daytona. We experienced a confidence level during the entire time we were in Daytona that was what we need to be able to have out there every week. We were confident that we’d worked hard going into the Daytona races and were as prepared as possible. During the Bud Shootout, our qualifying race and in the Daytona 500, we were all confident that we were prepared to win in each of them. There was just an overall feeling within the team that we were truly prepared to win. Daytona is over now and we just have to look to the future with that being our goal. We need to be able to go into every race with that same level of confidence – confidence that we’re as prepared as possible and that we have a car capable of winning.”

--Kurt’s record on the 2.0-mile California Speedway boasts one win (4/27/03 Auto Club 500), three top-five finishes and two pole positions (won both poles last season). He has completed 99.9 percent of all possible laps (2,253 of 2,255). Kurt’s first, last and only visit to California Speedway while in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series back in 2000 led to a pole and a dominant win.

--Kurt, Roy and crew will be racing their PRS-088 Miller Lite Dodge at California Speedway this weekend. Kurt explains: “We had two cars there at the Vegas test – our (PRS-) 78 and (PRS-) 80 chassis Dodge Chargers. While we were concentrating on getting everything right for the upcoming race at Vegas (March 11 UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400), we also looked at it as a test for all the upcoming intermediate tracks. Bottom line is that the ‘78’ was really tight and the ‘80’ was pretty loose. We really liked the 80 car there and everyone knows the old line that ‘loose is fast.’ The ’88 car’ is an exact carbon copy of that ’80 car,’ so that’s why we chose that particular Dodge Charger for the Fontana race. We think that it’ll be just what we need to get the job done – not just on qualifying day, but on race day, too.” Kurt ran the “88 car” one time last year; in the Sept. 3 California race. He started on the pole and finished 27th.

--Kurt will be introducing this week’s headliner at Saturday evening’s Miller Rock N’ Racing concert at California Speedway. The concert, free to fans attending Saturday’s (4:30 p.m. PST) Stater Bros. 300 NBS race, will feature The Cult. The concert is scheduled to begin shortly after the conclusion of Saturday’s race.

--“It’s not the will to win that matters; everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” –Coach Paul William “Bear” Bryant