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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Kurt Busch Ready For Repeat
Kurt Busch is the defending Atlanta race winner...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 03, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Kurt Busch (Left) with SPEED's Wendy Venturini (Right) in the garage area at Las Vegas prior to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Shelby American. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Three races into the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup season, it's way too early to say that Kurt Busch needs a good run in Sunday's Kobalt Tools 500. But just like every Sunday, the fiercely competitive Busch wants it in a big way.

Last year, Busch not only won this race, he dominated it in his familiar No. 2 Penske Racing Dodge Charger, leading 234 of 330 laps. It was the kind of beat-down drivers rarely get to administer on the competition, and Busch clearly relished the victory.

This time around, he and new crew chief Steve Addington come into Atlanta Motor Speedway with cars that have been consistently fast so far in 2010, but have not posted the finishes to show for it.

In the season-opening Daytona 500, Busch led 33 laps and was third with six laps to go when he pitted for tires under caution. He finished 33rd.

The team had a decent sixth-place run at Auto Club Speedway a week later, but last week's event was a heartbreaking: Racing in front of his hometown fans at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Busch qualified on the pole, but less than 100 laps into the race became collateral damage when Jamie McMurray and Juan Pablo Montoya wrecked in front of him.

That little contretemps dropped Busch to 35th in the final race results and 19th in the Sprint Cup points standings. Nevertheless, he's ready to try for a repeat victory in Atlanta.

“Confidence is up and on a high going into a race that you’ve won,” said Busch. “The tires change and there’s a little bit of setup change that we’ve seen since last year at this time. You hope that things come together just as smoothly as they did the year before.”

Not only is Busch the defending race winner, but Addington was the winning crew chief in this race in 2008, when Busch's younger brother, Kyle, gave Toyota its first Cup victory.

The elder Busch said he and Addington are continuing to work on their language and communications in their first season together.

“I put the responsibility solely on my shoulders and that is giving as good of information as I can to the crew chief to make his job easier so that he’s able to make the call as easy as he can and that way we’re on the same page,” Kurt Busch said of Addington. “I think that it’s the driver’s responsibility ultimately to make the crew chiefs job simple when he’s on that pit box because he’s in a pressure cooker for when to pit, two tires, four tires … anything that I can do to make his job easier will make for success for both of us.”

And success is what the Penske boys are shooting for this time around.

“Honestly, you just go in there every week shooting for a top-10 finish and you have to build that consistency over time,” said Busch. “We hope that we’re able to do that again this time around. A top -10 finish would be great, but we’re shooting for a win because we won (at Atlanta) last year.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.

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