Busch glad to regain position in the NASCAR garage
By Rea White - Associate Editor
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Rusty Jarrett / Getty Images for NASCAR
Finally, Kurt Busch is back in the front of the garage.
Busch and his Penske Racing team agreed to trade owners points with teammate Same Hornish Jr. prior to the season, relegating Busch and his group to the back of the garage for the opening five races of the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. Now, the group is 10th in the standings, and the garage lineup is based on this year’s points. That means that Busch’s team will park at the front of the garage and that he is locked into races without having to use a past champions provisional.
Both are good things for the Pat Tryson-led group.
“We shouldn’t have problems locating our team’s transporter this weekend, and that’ll be a pleasant change,” Busch said. “My hat’s off to Pat and all the guys on our team for showing what great total team players we have on our ‘blue deuce’ crew during the first five races of the season. It felt a little bit like being a world explorer every week, asking around and even calling Pat on the cell phone to find out where we were parked.
“When we did our media interview session at Daytona in the media center, I told them that it was probably the best for everyone involved for me to come to them because half of them probably couldn’t have found our transporter in the garage if we had been doing the interview there. It was a pretty tough grind for Pat and the guys, but we all buckled up and weathered the storm.”
Atlanta Motor Speedway proved particularly problematic for the crew, since the transporter was in the back corner of the garage.
“It was actually a shorter walk from my coach to the transporter than it was from the transporter to the NASCAR office transporter,” Busch said. “Maybe that wasn’t all too bad. Seriously though, it was pretty difficult to see our guys have to work outside the garage area under a tent until qualifying was over. With the rain and all, some of the guys resorted to wearing rain boots and all because of all the grass and mud out there.”
Still, Busch is proud of the way his team handled the situation – and joins them in celebrating the move back to the front of the garage.
“Through it all, Pat and the entire team showed so much class,” he said. “I never heard a single complaint from any of the guys.”
