Busch looks to gain ground in Chase

Posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 12:47 PM EDT.

The Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship heads to Auto Club Speedway in suburban Los Angeles (Fontana) for this weekend’s Pepsi 500, the fourth of 10 races that will decide this season’s series champion.

Auto Club Speedway, a two-mile oval that is almost identical to Michigan International Speedway, will serve plenty of challenges for drivers and crew chiefs alike. With typical long green-flag runs, track position and fuel mileage will play key roles in the outcome of the 250-lap event. Equally critical will be Friday afternoon qualifying that will set the 43 car field and those ever critical pit stall selections for Sunday’s event.

After last weekend’s event in Kansas, Dodge’s Kurt Busch is fifth in the Chase points, 91 behind leader Mark Martin. Kasey Kahne is 11th, 190 points behind the leader.

Busch (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger) is considered one of the early favorites to win the championship. He won the title in 2004, the first year of the Chase format. A total of 190 points separate first place and 11th in the Chase standings, and only 99 points separate first to sixth—the closest points margin after the first three races of the Chase since the format’s inception in 2004.

“There are still plenty of guys that have a legitimate shot at this and ours is still very high with our team at Penske Racing,” Busch said. “We feel like the first couple of races have gone very well. To finish 11th at Kansas was a bit off for us, but we struggled on pit road. We had loose wheels and the last adjustment we made on our Miller Lite Dodge didn’t allow us to take advantage of the double-file restart at the end. So we still find ourselves in a great position. You just don’t want to have that bad race early on and have to dig out of a hole.”

In 14 starts at Fontana, Busch has one win, four top-five, and six top-10 finishes. Busch started fourth, led once and finished fifth in the spring event at California this year. The 2004 series champion has three poles at California including a sweep of the No. 1 spot in 2006.

Kahne (No. 9 Budweiser Dodge Charger) used a sixth-place finish last weekend in Kansas to move up one spot to 11th in the Sprint Cup Series point standings. In all 11 starts at Fontana, Kahne has one win, three top-five and seven top-10 finishes. Kahne has led 268 laps at California including 130 of the 250-lap event in 2006 en route to victory.  He has led laps in six of the 11 Sprint Cup races he’s competed in at the two-mile track.

Despite the hiccup in New Hampshire that dropped Kahne to 12th in driver points, he knows that the next few races are some of the strongest in his driver portfolio.

“I think we run pretty well in these upcoming Chase races,” Kahne said. “We have as good a shot as anybody at these tracks because they’re tracks I enjoy and we’ve always raced pretty well at. If you have an issue, you lose points. If I didn’t have an issue (in New Hampshire), I think that I would have run in the top 10 and these upcoming races we can do the same thing. We have a great package in our Budweiser Dodge for most of these tracks. I think we’ll do it; we just need to keep pulling it together and get these points back. I think we have a shot at getting a lot of them back.”

All seven Dodge teams entered in the Pepsi 500 are assured berths into the event as they sit inside the top 35 in car owner points. Dodge has one win at Fontana.

NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase standings
(After 29 of 36 races)
1. Mark Martin, 5,551 (-)
2. Jimmie Johnson, 5,533 (-18)
3. Juan Montoya, 5,500 (-51)
4. Tony Stewart, 5,484 (-67)
5. Kurt Busch, 5,460 (-91)
6. Denny Hamlin, 5,452 (-99)
7. Jeff Gordon, 5,448 (-103)
8. Greg Biffle, 5,437 (-114)
9. Ryan Newman, 5,387 (-164)
10. Carl Edwards, 5,386 (-165)
11. Kasey Kahne, 5,361 (-190)
12. Brian Vickers, 5,301 (-250)

 Other notes

• Elliott Sadler (No. 19 Stanley Dodge Charger) last Sprint Cup victory came at Fontana (Sept. 5, 2004. 
• David Stremme (No. 12 Penske Dodge Charger) has moved up two positions in the NASCAR Cup Series point standings. The Penske Racing driver is 29th in the rankings with seven races remaining on the 2009 schedule.

What you need to know

The Race: Pepsi 400
The Place: Auto Club Speedway (2-mile oval)
The Date:  Sunday. Oct. 11
The Time: 3:15 p.m. (EDT)
Distance: 250 laps/500 miles
TV: ABC, 2:30 p.m. (EDT)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 12:47 PM EDT and is filed under Motorsports. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.