Up in smoke

Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004 | 11:35 a.m.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- What had the makings of a very successful Speedweeks for Kyle Busch went up in a puff of smoke -- literally -- Monday at Daytona International Speedway.

Busch was running seventh late in Monday's delayed Hershey's Kisses 300 NASCAR Busch Series race when his No. 5 Lowe's Chevrolet overheated and started pouring smoke into the driver's compartment.

Busch, who won an ARCA race at Daytona to open Speedweeks, was forced to withdraw 19 laps from the finish of the race, which was won by Dale Earnhardt Jr. Busch, a Las Vegas native, finished 24th.

"We pretty much had a great day until we overheated," Busch said. "The Lowe's Chevrolet was running great and not many times do you see an engine failure coming out of the Hendrick motor shop; it just happened to overheat."

The race started out on a rocky note for Busch, who was in fourth place when the rain-delayed race was resumed on lap 35. Busch was bumped by Paul Wolfe coming out of Turn 2 and pushed up into the outside wall. Wolfe spun down across the track and triggered a nine-car accident.

Although Wolfe is a Busch Series regular, Busch said it was the Nextel Cup Series drivers competing in the race who gave him the roughest time while he was on the track.

"The Cup guys were mainly the worst ones," Busch said. "There were some radical guys out there and others that you could trust and hang out with.

"For some reason, our car just overheated and didn't want to go anymore ... it was probably knocking in the nose some and knocking out the grill some -- stuff like that from all the people wanting to bump draft out there."

After running several laps in the draft with Earnhardt, Busch said he took a valuable lesson away from his first Busch Series race at Daytona.

"Basically, you learn that once he gets up front and it's clear, he'll drop down and dump you," Busch said. "Junior has had a great teacher in his father and (my brother) Kurt and I actually had to try to teach ourselves how to draft but I've actually had Kurt give me a lot of help on doing that kind of stuff."

Busch, who is the driving for the same Hendrick Motorsports team won the Busch Series championship last season with Brian Vickers, said he was encouraged by the way his car ran before the overheating problem.

"You just kind of come in here to Daytona and get what you get and then you try to race the rest of the season the way that it needs to be raced," he said.

"We're going to come out of here with a 24th-place finish and hopefully the rest of them won't be that bad. I'm sure we're going to have some bumps in the road but hopefully we can still run up front and do the best that we can every week."

Earnhardt won his third consecutive Busch Series race at Daytona less than 24 hours after capturing his first Daytona 500 victory. Earnhardt led five times in the race for 47 laps and posted a 0.135-second margin of victory ahead of second-place Johnny Sauter.

Earnhardt said he was up until 2 a.m. Monday celebrating his Daytona 500 victory and then had to get up at 8 to have his Nextel Cup Chevrolet inducted into the Daytona USA attraction adjacent to the speedway. He then had to be at the track at 11 a.m. (EST) for the start of the Busch race.

"That's enough sleep for me," Earnhardt said. "I felt pretty good. That's a pretty good alarm clock -- putting your car into Daytona USA."

Earnhardt said he had no problem focusing on the race when it came time to strap into the car.

"It's kind of like you just pick up where you left off," he said. "The racing (Monday) was a little harder than I particularly care to be a part of so I just kind of went to eighth or ninth and just rode it out waited until them guys wore themselves out.

"For half the race there, we were just riding around and when it came time to go ... we went and got the lead and the guys raced each other so hard for second and third, we didn't get a whole lot of challenges."

Nextel Cup regulars Robby Gordon, Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth rounded out the top five.