Kurt Busch Finishes Ninth In The No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge At Phoenix |
 
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Posted on November 15, 2010
Kurt Busch ended up on the right side of what turned out to be a fuel mileage race Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway. Busch didn’t have to make a late-race stop for a splash of fuel. He had enough to make it to the checkered flag of the 312-lap event to finish ninth in the Kobalt Tools 500.
Penske Racing teammates weren’t as fortunate. Brad Keselowski was sidelined early when he cut down a tire on the No. 12 Penske Dodge, making heavy contact with the outside retaining wall in turn one on lap 59. He finished 42nd. Sam Hornish Jr. dropped a lap down to the leaders just past the halfway mark and could never get in position to make up the deficit. He ended up 32nd after having to make a green-flag stop late in the race for minor sheet metal repairs to the No. 77 Mobil 1 Dodge to resolve a tire rub.
Busch started third in the No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge and ran in the top three through the first 125 laps before handling issues developed. “Our Miller Lite Dodge was a little temperamental today,” he said. “We did our job on Friday (in qualifying) to get a solid starting position (third), but we weren’t able to capitalize on the early track position that we had. After the second stop, we kept working on the Miller Lite Dodge with air and wedge adjustments, but the car didn’t react the way that we needed it to. Most of the middle of the race, the car was tight in, loose in the center and loose off. It cost us too much track position.
“Around lap 235, we pitted for a second time after 10 laps or so to get back to an earlier combination that the car liked. From there, the car really responded and it was obvious that it may come down to fuel mileage. Steve (Addington, crew chief) said we were good to go to the end (of the race) and if it stayed green, we could make it on fuel. It was a solid day, but we need to get a better balance on the car. We’ll take the top-10 finish.”
Keselowski started 30th but had picked up 12 spots in the first 25 laps before misfortune hit the No. 12 team. “It was just a tough deal for this Penske Dodge team today,” he said. “This was a brand new car that the guys built and I hate to see us get into the wall like that so early in the race. We felt that we had a really solid race car heading into today. Obviously, it didn’t go the way that we wanted.
“There was no real warning that the right-front was about to let go. It was just a last minute deal heading down the front stretch that surprised us. It looks like it was some sort of weird tire failure that I’ve never seen before. I’m not sure what happened. It was a strange, strange deal for sure.”
Nationwide Series
Brad Keselowski recorded his 25th top five of the 2010 season with a fourth-place finish in Saturday’s WYPALL 200. It matches the Nationwide single-season record set last year by Kyle Busch. Keselowski’s chance to break the deadlock comes this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway in the season finale where he will officially be crowned the Nationwide Series champion.
Teammate Justin Allgaier started third and finished eighth, his sixth top-10 finish in the last seven races.
Keselowski started 12th in the No. 22 Discount Tire Dodge and claimed as high as third with 40 laps remaining in the 200-lap event. Allgaier, who ran as high as second, was fifth at the time in the No. 12 Verizon Wireless Dodge.
“It was a good point day for this Discount Tire Dodge team,” said Keselowski who clinched the 2010 Nationwide driver title last week at Texas. “We needed just a little bit more speed today. We were just a little bit off. We still made a solid effort and got a great top-five finish out of it.”
Keselowski has a 430-point advantage over Carl Edwards in the season point standings and called matching the top-five record “an incredible accomplishment.”
“The Discount Tire Dodge guys have done an amazing job preparing the cars that I get to drive every weekend,” he said. “There are a lot of people that have an influence on how these cars run at the track and I’m just the lucky one that gets to drive them. This week was no exception. It would be cool to break the record next weekend at Homestead. I know that my guys will have an awesome Discount Tire Dodge ready.”
Keselowski also trimmed the deficit in the owner standings. Gibbs Racing currently has the lead with the No. 18 entry ahead of Penske Racing’s No. 22. “It was a good owner point’s day for us,” he said. “We did our job today and now we’re only 41 points behind. The mile-and-a-half tracks are where the Gibbs cars have been really strong this year, so we’ll have our work cut out for us. We put ourselves in position to get a shot at the title for Roger (Penske) and Penske Racing.”
Allgaier ran as high as second in the event and in the top 10 most of the race. “My guys do a good job every week and this week was no different,” said Allgaier. “They gave me
a great race car. We qualified third and had a top-10 finish. We had a super race car from the time we unloaded. I was surprised how good the car was. It’s the same car we had at Gateway. The Verizon Dodge crew worked really hard to make it as good as it was. Unfortunately, we just weren’t as good on the long runs. I really don’t know why. That first pit stop, we got behind and just couldn’t completely recover those positions back. At the end of the day, we had a top-10 finish.”
Race Final Results
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
Kobalt Tools 500
Phoenix Int’l Raceway
Sunday, Nov. 14, 2010
1. Carl Edwards
2. Ryan Newman
3. Joey Logano
4. Greg Biffle
5. Jimmie Johnson
6. Kevin Harvick
7. Matt Kenseth
8. Mark Martin
9. Kurt Busch
10. Jamie McMurray
32. Sam Hornish Jr.
42. Brad Keselowski
CHASE POINT STANDINGS
(AFTER 9 of 10 Races)
1, Denny Hamlin 6,462
2. Jimmie Johnson -15
3. Kevin Harvick -46
4. Carl Edwards -264
5. Matt Kenseth -311
6. Jeff Gordon -338
7. Kyle Busch -347
8. Greg Biffle -349
9. Tony Stewart -388
10. Kurt Busch -429
11. Clint Bowyer -434
12. Jeff Burton -504
Race Results
NASCAR Nationwide Series
WYPALL 200
Phoenix Int’l Raceway
Saturday, Nov. 13, 2001
1. Carl Edwards
2. Kevin Harvick
3. Joey Logano
4. Brad Keselowski
5. Reed Sorenson
6. Aric Almirola
7. Colin Braun
8. Justin Allgaier
9. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
10. Steve Wallace
NASCAR Nationwide Series
Driver Point Standings
(After 34 of 35 races)
1. Brad Keselowski 5474
2. Carl Edwards -430
3. Kyle Busch -735
4. Justin Allgaier -930
5. Paul Menard -1145
6. Kevin Harvick -1260
7. Joey Logano -1587
8. Trevor Bayne -1588
9. Steve Wallace -1652
10. Jason Leffler -1667
Nov 15, 2010 @ 10:46:18
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a few more Dodge Chargers out there on the track for us fans to watch?!? Three out of 43 just isn’t enough to give us Dodge fans much hope. It’s taking all the fun out of watching Nascar these days!
How about approaching Richard Petty and Ray Evernham and helping those guys take back control of RPM, putting RPM Dodge Chargers on the track next year?
ANY additional teams would help!
Nov 15, 2010 @ 18:46:52
Well, another cup season blown! Try again next year.
I hope the blue deuce will be great for Brad Keselowski. Maybe he can bring home the championship.
Nov 16, 2010 @ 13:35:27
Dodge is going to have to realize that the Cup series is NOT something that they can just “dabble” in and expect to win a championship. They will have to go “all in” to have a chance and that means more teams running Chargers on the track. By the numbers, Dodge should be supporting about 10 or 11 Chargers on the track each weekend (about 1/4 of the field, given there are 4 manufacturers out there). Supporting only 3 cars is a HUGE disadvantage; regardless of what the PR folks at Dodge and Penske say in public. Not only is it a big disadvantage in simple numbers, but it’s also a big disadvantage because of things like:
Fewer manufacturer “friends” on the track
Fewer tire tests
Fewer car/track tests
Fewer engineers
Less test data to compile/compare
Fewer teams to compare data with
Less data to compare when changes to engines/chassis are made
Etc., etc., etc.
Dodge can tout the Nationwide Championship this year, and I will too, but realistically, Brad had only a few competitors out there in that series. Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch were his only real competition and Kyle would have almost certainly won the championship if he had run all of the races.
I’m almost at the point now of wishing Dodge would either get serious by supporting several more teams out there in each series (CWTS, Nationwide, and Cup) or just get out of Nascar all-together and “save face.”
It’s a sad situation for us Mopar/Nascar fans when Toyota wins championships with no more experience in Nascar than they have and Dodge has yet to win a Cup championship after re-entering the series 10 years ago!