Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Flat tires ruin Busch’s day at Texas Speedway

Tuesday, April 9, 2002 | 10:06 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at bh@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4089.

Midway through Monday's Samsung/Radio Shack 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, Kurt Busch appeared to be headed to his third top-10 finish in seven NASCAR Winston Cup races this season.

Busch, who led the race (for one lap) during a series of green-flag pit stops, was running in the top 10 when his charge to the front was derailed by tire problems. The 23-year-old Las Vegas native finished 23rd, two laps off the pace, in the race won by Roush Racing teammate Matt Kenseth.

"We had three flat tires and that's very hard to overcome," Busch said in a post-race interview. "We probably overpowered it a little bit too much with the front (anti-roll) bar, but you shouldn't have three flat tires in one race.

"We had a really strong car today. Unfortunately, we had a right-front tire that felt like it was going down and that forced us to pit earlier than we would have liked. We went a lap down and fought hard through traffic, but couldn't get our lap back. We must have run over some debris and had another tire go down, but the crew did a great job all day."

As a result of his finish, Busch slipped two spots to seventh in Winston Cup points. Busch trails front-running Sterling Marlin by 189 points but is only 70 points behind third-place Jimmie Johnson in the standings.

As for the newly repaved Texas Motor Speedway, Busch gave the track a passing grade.

"It was one groove," he said. "You could go high if you needed to pass somebody that was slowing you up as far as lap traffic, but it's (another groove) going to come in. It's going to be a really great racetrack about a year or so down the road."

"Kurt is a really good racecar driver," Burton said. "One of the things we preach at Roush is you've got to race the way you want to race. No one is gonna tell you how to race, but if you race clean and you race smart and you drive people the way they drive you, nine times out of ten that will work in your favor.

"All young drivers have trouble with that, but Kurt did at Bristol what he felt got done to him: 'Here's a guy that knocked me out of the way, so I can knock him out of the way.' That's the rules we live by at Roush Racing. We don't go looking for trouble, that's not what we do, but if you come looking for trouble with us it's there for you and that's how it all went down.

"I know Jimmy was upset about it and everybody says stuff and does stuff in the heat of the moment, but you can't do something to somebody and then have it done to you and be mad about it. It just doesn't work like that."