Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch falls 3 laps short of Texas triple play
Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch led 232 laps but finished 11th in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. // Jeff Robinson, NASCAR Scene
FORT WORTH, Texas - Dave Rogers stood patiently and waited for a television interview, his face expressionless though his insides, he said, were filled with disbelief and disappointment.
His first race as Kyle Busch’s crew chief had nearly made for a perfect debut: Busch led 232 of the 334 laps, and had he led three more, he would have won Sunday’s Sprint Cup Dickies 500 and swept all three NASCAR races at the Texas weekend.
No driver had ever done that, and after Busch ran out of fuel with three laps to go and ended up 11th, that remains unchanged.
Busch simply said, “I’m out” on the team radio when his gas tank ran dry, then parked in his garage stall after the race and stormed into his hauler before slipping out a back door and leaving Rogers to answer questions on his behalf.
“Looking at our numbers there, looking at the lap times that he had fallen off from the previous run, I thought for sure we were going to make it ’til maybe off Turn 4 of the final lap,” Rogers said. “I don’t know if we didn’t get it full or the fuel cell just didn’t pick up what we thought it could, but we had several green-flag runs this race, so we were pretty confident. We knew what we had for fuel mileage.”
As members of the No. 18 team somberly worked on the car behind him, Rogers said there was no other choice but to go for the win, given the team’s position outside the Chase field. If Busch had pitted, his brother Kurt (the eventual winner) would have passed him anyway.
“Our only shot of winning it was to stay out, so we gambled,” Rogers said. “Sometimes when you gamble, you lose. We lost today.”
Rogers said Busch didn’t speak to anyone after the race, but he didn’t blame the driver for being upset.
“I think he handled it well. It’s tough, you know?” Rogers said. “You lead all those laps, and he could have gone for the clean sweep this weekend. He deserved to win all three in a row and you get beat.”
Asked if Rogers had wished for an easier first night on the job instead of being faced with a decision that could make or break the race, he smiled weakly.
“Welcome to the club, huh?” he said. “It’s part of the game, it’s what you sign up for. Someone’s got to do that job, and I raised my hand and said ‘I want do it,’ and here I am.”
