Friday, May 7, 2004 | 9:05 a.m.
Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at [email protected] or (702) 259-4089.
He is coming off his fifth consecutive top-10 effort and is second in the NASCAR Busch Series standings after nine races, but Kyle Busch said he isn't completely satisfied with how his rookie season is unfolding.
"We're where we want to be -- 52 points out of the lead -- but we ask ourselves why we're not leading the points by 150," Busch, a Las Vegas native, said after finishing seventh last weekend in the Stater Bros. 300 at California Speedway.
"Unless you're sitting on the pole and winning every race, I don't think you're ever completely satisfied with where you are."
Busch, who turned 19 this past Sunday, admitted his recent success in the No. 5 Lowe's Chevrolet has left him wondering when he is going to win his first Busch Series race.
"We keep scoring top-fives and top-10s, but they're not the finishes that we want," Busch said. "Earlier in the year, when we weren't getting these finishes, we wanted top-fives and top-10s; now that we have top-fives and top-10s, we want wins.
"Now that we had a seventh-place finish at California, I feel like we should have finished third."
Busch's sixth top-10 finish of the season allowed him to climb from fourth to second in the Busch Series standings. He trails Michael Waltrip by 52 points heading into Saturday's Charter 250 at Gateway International Raceway near St. Louis.
Gordon will be the busiest of those drivers during the month of May; he plans to race in four Cup events, five Busch Series races and the Indianapolis 500. He said he plans to compete in every Busch Series race as long as he's in contention for the championship.
"We have said since the beginning that as long as we are in reach of the championship, we would continue to race," Gordon said. "We had a little bit of trouble in California but we gambled with a pit stop, it paid off and we are still fifth in (points).
Tommy Baldwin is putting four young drivers into the No. 6 Dodge for three races each under the "Hungry Drivers" program. The driver who with the best results at the end of the season will be considered for a Busch Series ride in '05.
"I know enough baseball history to know this isn't the first time they've tried something like this. You can see photographs from the 1920s and see ads on the outfield fences. Look at any game today and you see the ads behind the batters so the center-field (television) cameras pick them up.
"I read somewhere, 'it's going to look like a racecar out there.' Racing didn't start the advertising as part of sports -- Major League Baseball did; we've just done a better job of using it."
MLB shifted gears on Thursday and decided against using bases as part of the promotion.
Bourdais lost control of his car and made heavy contact with the concrete wall at the exit of Turn 2. He resumed testing in his backup car until rain cut the afternoon session short.
"I was probably going 150 (mph) when the back end of the car swapped ends between the first and second turns," Bourdais said. "There was no warning. It was a hard hit but fortunately I was okay."
Jorg Bergmeister of Germany turned a lap of 4 minutes, 5.975 seconds around the 8.6-mile circuit in the team's Porsche 911 GT3 RSR. Porsche factory drivers Bergmeister, Patrick Long (Oak Park, Calif.) and Sascha Maassen (Belgium) will pilot the car for the Mike Petersen-owned team in the June 12-13 race.
Last year, Petersen Motorsports/White Lightning Racing teamed with American Le Mans Series rival Alex Job Racing to win the GT class in the 71st running of the world's most prestigious endurance race.
A total of 140 crew members, nine cameras, 15 actors and 200 extras were at Sam Boyd on Saturday to film portions of the movie, which stars Daryl Hannah. Supercross riders David Pingree, Tyler Evans, Rich Taylor and Dave Castillo served as stunt doubles during the afternoon practice session.
Additional information can be found at www.lasvegaspwc.com.
Spectator gates open at 6 p.m., qualifying begins at 6:20 and racing is scheduled to start at 7:15.
The Ken Black who won the nostalgic drag race, who also is from Las Vegas, is not the same person who owns the NHRA Pro Stock cars driven by Greg Anderson and Jason Line. The Sun regrets the error.
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