Busch finishes 8th at Fontana, Hornish 12th

Posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 10:05 AM EDT.

Kurt Busch continues to rack up top-10 finishes in the Chase for the Championship. He finished eighth Sunday in the Pepsi 500 at Auto Club Speedway, his third top-10 in the four Chase events.

Busch started a disappointing 25th, but it became evident early in the race the No. 2 Dodge was much better than the qualifying effort. Busch was in the top 15 by lap 20 and broke into the top 10 at the 100-lap mark of the 250-lap event. He raced in the top 10 the remainder of the event and led on two occasions.

“It was a decent run for us,” Busch said. “We just kept plugging away trying to get to that front pack.  When we did find them, those boys were fast. There wasn’t much we could do.

Busch, running the high line around the 2-mile oval, had a couple of encounters with the retaining wall. The first resulted in only minor sheet metal damage to the right side, but the second brought out the seventh caution and involved two Chase drivers—Kasey Kahne and Greg Biffle.

As Busch exited turn four, the back of his car broke loose and brushed the wall.  He managed to right his machine, but in doing so made contact with Kahne in the No. 9 Budweiser Dodge Charger.  Kahne hit Biffle and the two slid through the infield grass, but were able to continue.  Busch was running sixth at the time and Kahne was eighth.

“I ruined a few Chase guys day,” said Busch.  “I apologize to them.  I got off of Turn 4 and the car just jumped sideways on me, hit the wall and bounced back in the groove where everybody was. Everybody has the gloves off with 25 laps to go. That’s where our team has been struggling a bit, giving away positions at the end of the race. Our Miller Lite Dodge came home eighth. We did the best we could. We’re just not hanging with the guys that are finishing one-two every week.”

Busch is 121 points behind new leader Jimmie Johnson with six races remaining to decide the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup champion.

“We had a good Miller Lite Dodge,” Pat Tryson, crew chief for the No. 2 Dodge team, said. “We thought that we were going to get a top-five and just got jumbled up in that one restart that gave us a fender rub. Our car was pretty good and we battled our way up to the leaders with 25 to go. That’s all that you can ask when you start where we did. It’s just racing. So, all in all, it’s not bad to bring home an eighth-place finish.”

The race turned into a nightmare for Richard Petty Motorsports with just five laps remaining. All four RPM cars—Elliott Sadler, AJ Allmendinger, Reed Sorenson and Kahne—were involved in an eight-car mishap. The cars received extensive damage and were unable to continue, turning promising finishes into frustration as the teams loaded the crumpled machines into the haulers.

The mishap snapped Reed Sorenson’s 55-race streak without a DNF (did not finish), the longest current streak among Sprint Cup drivers. Sadler’s last DNF occurred in June 2008.

Kahne remains 11th in the Chase standings.

“I was following the 44, so I can’t see anything,” Kahne said of the late-race crash. “He (Allmendinger) turned left to miss the wreck and I hit the wreck. We had a top six or seven car. We got in the mess with Busch earlier. From there, we got in this wreck. It was disappointing to go out of the race like that when we had a good car.”

Sam Hornish Jr. made a late-race rally to finish 12th in the Mobil 1 Dodge. He started 22nd. The race was down to the final 20 laps before Hornish broke into the top 20.

“It was a long day for us, for sure,” Hornish said. “The Mobil 1 Dodge wasn’t what we needed to be early in the race or wasn’t what we really needed in the middle. We kept running all day and got it to the end. We stayed out of the wrecks and did what we needed to do. That’s what we’ve been saying all along. When we don’t have a good day, we need to soldier on, make it to the end and at least get a top 20 out of it instead of a 35th. Everybody did exactly what they needed to do today.  I’m real proud of the guys.”

David Stremme rallied back in the closing laps to finish 16th in the No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge.

Driver, team, finish
Kurt Busch, No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge, 8th
Sam Hornish Jr., No. 77 Mobil 1 Dodge, 12th
David Stremme, No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge, 16th
Reed Sorenson, No. 43 Rosie’s Organic Chicken Dodge, 31st
Elliott Sadler, No. 19 Stanley Dodge, 32nd
AJ Allmendinger, No. 44 Dassault Dodge, 33rd
Kasey Kahne, No. 19 Budweiser Dodge, 34th

Pepsi 400 Race Results
Auto Club Speedway
(Race 30 of 36)
1. Jimmie Johnson
2. Jeff Gordon
3. Juan Pablo Montoya
4. Mark Martin
5. Tony Stewart
6. Carl Edwards
7. David Ragan
8. Kurt Busch (Dodge)
9. Clint Bowyer
10. Kevin Harvick
11. Casey Mears
12. Sam Hornish Jr. (Dodge)
(Other Dodge Drivers)
16. David Stremme
31. Reed Sorenson
32. Elliott Sadler
33. AJ Allmendinger
34. Kasey Kahne

NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase standings
(Race 4 of 10 in the Chase)
1. Jimmie Johnson (—)
2. Mark Martin (-12)
3. Juan Montoya (-58)
4. Tony Stewart (-84)
5. Jeff Gordon (-105)
6. Kurt Busch (Dodge) (121)
7. Greg Biffle (-188)
8. Carl Edwards (-192)
9. Denny Hamlin (-219)
10. Ryan Newman (-223)
11. Kasey Kahne (Dodge) (-306)
12. Brian Vickers (-351)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 10:05 AM EDT and is filed under Motorsports and tagged Dashboard. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.