Results tagged “Kurt Busch” from Haddock in the Paddock

Kurt Busch has won a race at the newly named Auto Club Speedway and won a Cup championship, but his team almost lost out on a garage stall for this weekend’s race at the track.
His team, Penske Racing, added a third car with three-time Indy Racing League champion Sam Hornish Jr. as driver. But to ensure that Hornish starts the first six races of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, Roger Penske, owner of the team, transferred Busch’s points in the owners standings to Hornish’s team.
NASCAR rules state that the cars in the top 35 in last year’s owners standings receive automatic starting spots in the first six Cup races of the season.
Busch can use his past champion provisional as a last resort to qualify for the first six Cup races. He had to use one for the Daytona 500.
But because Busch’s team technically has no points from last year, it almost didn’t get a garage stall on a rainy day at the track on Friday.
“I thought my poor guys were out in the rain this morning without a garage stall,” said Busch, driver of the No. 2 Dodge for Penske Racing. “But luckily we ended up with one of the last garage stalls that they had available just because we don’t have any points.”
He said it was a little odd to be second in the Sprint Cup Series standings and not have a garage. But it was just the result of another unselfish act from Busch, who is being credited for giving his teammate Ryan Newman the little last-lap nudge he needed to win the Daytona 500.
“That’s the sacrifice,” Busch said. “I guess I’ve been a real team player by handing over points to Sam and pushing Ryan to victory, but it’s a great start. Penske Racing has got a lot of great things going on right now.”

NASCAR put Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart on probation for the first six races of the Sprint Cup Series starting with Sunday's Daytona 500.
The two drivers were involved in a chain-reaction wreck during practice for last week's Bud Shootout at Daytona International Speedway. The crash collected a number of other cars including Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and Ryan Newman, Busch's teammate at Penske Racing.
On his weekly radio show with Matt Yocum on Sirius Satellite Radio, Stewart talked about the crash and the meeting with NASCAR officials following the incident.
Yocum asked Stewart about being able to meet with NASCAR officials behind closed doors and not have to worry about any of the conversation leaking to members of the media. Stewart said he liked having a private place to discuss these sort of incidents with other drivers.

"It let’s both of you get that frustration out," said Stewart, driver of the No. 20 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. "The good thing, and especially for somebody like Kurt and myself who, you get us through that first five or 10 minute period, it helps a lot. The media has such good access to us now that when something happens you get that emotional side that first five minutes and I can almost guarantee you every time there’s the blood-sucking varmints down here that are part of the media that make up a very, very tiny percentage of the ones that actually go out and work hard to do a good job. But there’s that percentage of leeches down there that want to keep mix[ing] the pot that love to get you when you get in that emotional side. That’s one of the good things, positive things about going to the trailer, is you get to air that part of it out with each other."