Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Kyle Busch impresses under adverse conditions

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 | 9:01 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.

Kyle Busch's 12th-place finish in Sunday's NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway may have been more impressive than his runner-up finish a week earlier at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Busch wrecked his primary car during qualifying Friday and had to race his backup car. Because of NASCAR's new impound rule, which was in effect at Atlanta, Busch's crew was able to do only minor work on the car to get it ready for the race. Once the race started, crew chief Alan Gustafson continually made adjustments to the car that allowed Busch to get back on the lead lap after losing a lap and charge to the front in the closing laps.

"It was a decent run for us," Busch said. "We wish we could have got anywhere in the top 10 -- fifth through seventh would have been great. For what we had right there, 12th place is pretty good.

"If we would have had our primary car, I think we would have had a really, really good shot a finishing in the top five; it was a dynamite racecar. I messed up a little bit in qualifying and you learn from those, of course. The biggest thing that we learned was don't wreck the primary car."

Gustafson said he was impressed with Busch's effort despite fighting an ill-handling car early in the race.

"You know, 12th place isn't a bad run if you didn't have any problems," he said. "All the guys (on the team) made good pit stops and kept their heads in the game. It's easy to lose your focus in that situation and nobody did. Kyle kept his head in the game and drove smart. You've got to make the bad days good days (and) we did that."

Busch was the top-finishing rookie for the third consecutive race and now leads Travis Kvapil by 11 points in the Raybestos Rookie of the Year standings. More importantly, Busch climbed three spots in the Nextel Cup points standings, to 19th, and is only 55 points out of 10th place after four races.

MIXED RESULTS: After opening the season with three consecutive finishes outside the top 20, Michael Waltrip posted his best finish of the year -- seventh -- Sunday at Atlanta.

"It feels like we knocked the monkey off our back and went in the direction we needed to go," said Waltrip, who improved eight spots to 27th in Nextel Cup points. "All these tracks coming up are our kind of tracks. We'll be testing in Texas and in Martinsville over the next couple of weeks so that we can keep up the top-10 finishes."

Not all is rosy at Dale Earnhardt Inc., however. Dale Earnhardt Jr. struggled to a 24th-place finish Sunday -- his third consecutive finish outside the top 20 after his third-place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500. But Earnhardt expressed confidence in his team and crew chief Pete Rondeau.

"I'm proud of the effort my team gave (Sunday)," Earnhardt said. "Pete and the guys kept digging, which makes me feel good. I can sleep well at night knowing we gave it everything we had. I drove my heart out ... (and) I'm going to drive just as hard every time as long as my team's busting their (tails) like they're doing right now."

FINAL LVMS RATINGS: The Fox broadcast of the March 13 UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 Nextel Cup race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway earned a 6.4 rating, according to figures released by Nielsen Media Research.

The rating was a 10.3-percent increase over the 2004 race at LVMS but was lower than the 6.9 rating for the 2003 race here.