Photo Credit: Sarah Crabill/Getty Images
Kurt Busch, driver of the No. 41 Monster Energy Haas Automation Chevrolet, won the Axlanta 400 at Pocono Raceway on Monday virtue of saving the most gas in the closing stages of the race.
“Well, thank you,” Busch said. “It’s an amazing feeling when you get to drive into victory lane at any track, any weekend at any time, and it’s very special, because it makes you think of all the hard work that everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing put into this car. To be in position, that’s what it’s all about. Johnny Klausmeier called a perfect race to gamble on the fuel a little bit, but he also gave me the ball. He’s like, hey, we’re two laps shy, go get it for us.
“And so as a driver, we were restarting I think 10th at that point. We had to work through some of the guys that stayed out, which you knew or I knew we could get those guys because they were really gambling on fuel, but just overall a great team effort. It’s a lot of work at the shop, but each week we’ve been in position this year so far, and we haven’t quite sealed the deal, and so today we did, and we’re going to enjoy this win.”
Busch, a former Sprint Cup Series Champion, is adding to his legacy with each win he achieves. Notably, Pocono is one of his favorite tracks to race at.
“It’s something that you don’t think about, but it’s nice to have the acknowledgment to be in an elite group, but it takes an elite team and an effort that you have to have as a driver in this day and age to be in position to win, and so far this year on the Haas Automation Monster Energy Chevy team, we’ve been on one side of the yellow or one side of the restart at the end of a bunch of races, and it sits there and it wears on you a little bit, but then you’ve got to focus,” Busch added. “Focus, focus, focus, and allow the races to unfold. The more often that you’re in position to win, the more chances at winning you’re going to have, and throughout my career I’ve always enjoy racing here at Pocono.
“It’s a fun racetrack. It’s a different racetrack. It has road course rhythm. It has oval characteristics. But then it challenges engine builds. It challenges new setups because we race here in June and then we come back here quickly at the end of July, and then we don’t come back again for another 10 months, and technology changes so quickly. So Pocono is always a fun place to go to to challenge the team and to find that right strategy to win, and it’s an unbelievable feeling. I’m going to enjoy this one just like I’ve enjoyed the other 27.”
This was Busch’s 28th win in the Sprint Cup Series, however he says a win is a win no matter where it is or how many you have.
“It’s a win and it’s special, and any time you get a chance to enjoy a win at the Sprint Cup level, it’s hard to rank them against other ones, but there’s certain tracks I’ve done well at in my career, and Bristol is one of them,” Busch stated. “New Hampshire I have three wins, Atlanta I have three wins, and now at Pocono I have three wins. So it’s nice to have the confidence when you come to a track, and then you have a great team that’s pulling together to pick up the workload of Tony Gibson missing. So this one makes it more special because we were missing our crew chief, and we’ve got a first-timer that got a win today.”
Busch didn’t have his normal crew chief Tony Gibson as he was suspended for one race for a lug nut violation after the Coco Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on May 29. So team engineer Johnny Klausmeir was calling the race for Busch.
“I don’t know what it was,” Busch added. “His voice was way more calming than Gibson. When you have an engineer calculating your fuel, I mean, it’s a calculator. I know Gibson can do it just the same, but when you have a new guy or somebody different and you’re not at your full strength, there’s something that happens to everybody on the team. Everybody pulls harder. Everybody digs in a little bit deeper, and not having Tony Gibson here today, I know everybody gave that much more, and this is a win for Gibson.
“He’s assembled this group of guys, and Klausmeier took over, and it was a perfect called race. We had a great setup to maintain speed, and when he says you’re two laps shy, I’m like, great, all right, well, let’s see what we can get, and I knew he was going to gamble. I knew I needed to do my best to preserve the fuel and to deliver the win.”
During the last restart of the race, there was some contact amongst the top-three drivers that ultimately resulted in Busch passing Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the lead.
“It was definitely an exciting restart,” Busch said. “Those Hendrick guys, they came with a different second-gear ratio that I know all about now, but I didn’t have it today. What it did is it allowed them to jump ahead, and then by the time we got into Turn 1, I could choose easily left lane or right lane, and Chase Elliott wanted to block me coming off of Turn 1, and I said, okay, kid, here we go. If you’re going to block, you’re going to get a pretty good head of steam here down the back straightaway and then you’re going to have to decide what you want to do with it. I expected to get to his outside, and it didn’t turn out, and then he made a mistake, washed up, the 88 checked up, and I was able to get them both.
“Again, that gets back to what I answered about earlier. We’ve been on one side of the restart or the other at a bunch of races towards the end here, and I’m just glad that the restart panned out perfectly for us. Chase Elliott did a phenomenal job. He’s a smart kid. Dale Jr. swept both these races last year. I knew we were in good company up front, and we just needed a little bit of luck on our side, and we found it.”
