Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Short-track victories surprise Busch

Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2002 | 9:20 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.

After Kurt Busch's first NASCAR Winston Cup victory in March at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, the Las Vegas native looked at the remainder of the schedule and said his goal was to finish the season with four wins.

Busch, 24, no doubt was looking at the glut of 1.5-mile tracks on the circuit and figured his best chances of winning were on circuits such as Lowe's Motor Speedway, Chicagoland Speedway, Kansas Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway -- not on another half-mile track.

So when Busch notched his second career Winston Cup win Sunday at Martinsville, Va., he was as shocked as anybody.

"I'm just as surprised again as we were at Bristol," Busch said. "It's a great feeling to go out there and to compete and be able to maneuver through the field -- to rub a little bit here. You never want to rub anybody because then they'll end up rubbing you back, but it was just a good short-track race again.

"I didn't necessarily agree with Bristol and we won there. I didn't necessarily agree with Martinsville, heck, we won here. It's been tough. I thought we'd have a bunch more shots to win ... (but) I thought our wins would come at the mile and a halves, so this is great to pick it up on short tracks."

Busch is the only driver this season to score two wins in the six short-track races and is only the fourth driver in Winston Cup history to win more than one short-track race before the age of 25 (Richard Petty, Junior Johnson and Jeff Gordon are the others).

But Sunday's win didn't come easily. At one point, Busch got tapped from behind by Jeff Gordon and spun out coming off Turn 4. Busch was able to save the car from hitting anything and he continued on after losing five positions.

"I wasn't really worried about (the spin) because at Martinsville you can spin around, make a lot of smoke -- smokescreen everybody -- and stay on the lead lap and only lose a few positions," Busch said. "Everybody was racing tight. We had just caught that pack in front of me and I asked Jimmy (Fennig, his crew chief) 'How much are they asking to pay to park in this parking lot' because there were cars everywhere.

"We started to maneuver and I guess I may have pinched whoever it was that ran into us -- I guess it was Jeff Gordon. I thought Bill Elliott was right behind me but I made my move too late to go into turn three. I kind of cut down and maybe Jeff was there and maybe he got in too hot."

Busch moved up two spots, to seventh, in the Winston Cup points standings with his fourth top-10 finish in the past six races.