Friday, Sept. 30, 2005 | 9:28 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.
Kurt Busch may be 170 points out of first place after two disastrous races in NASCAR's Chase for the Nextel Cup, but he plans to get himself back into the championship hunt beginning with Sunday's race at Talladega Superspeedway.
Busch, the reigning Nextel Cup champion and a Las Vegas native, is hoping his track record at Talladega will give him an advantage over his Chase counterparts.
"It's been a rough start, but the best medicine is coming up for us this week at Talladega," said Busch, who has finishes of 35th and 23rd in the first two Chase races. "For us, we've had two bad finishes, we can't possibly have three in a row so we look at Talladega as a strong turning point for our team based off of past results.
"We've done well at Talladega but the biggest thing is everybody's going to be nervous this week about the big wreck ... but we're looking for a good finish."
Busch has performed well at Talladega -- one of two restrictor-plate tracks on the Nextel Cup circuit -- since he came into the Cup series on a full-time basis in 2001. He finished third in his first career start at the 2.66-mile track and has posted six top-10 finishes in nine career starts.
"For us, we've had great results at Talladega," Busch said. "I think that our car is going to be fast enough to hang out in the lead draft most of the day and when you're up there, you're going to be surrounded by good people that draft well. We're hoping we're within good company and that we get out of Talladega with a good finish."
Busch, who finished seventh at Talladega in May, said coming back from two bad races is not impossible under the new Chase format -- as evidenced by Jimmie Johnson's run from ninth to second during the final six races of 2004. Johnson finished eight points behind Busch in the first Chase for the Nextel Cup.
"It has been a bad start, our back is up against the wall, but you can't count us out," Busch said. "We're definitely a team that's going to pull through this. We've been up against our share of adversity and overcome it.
"You definitely have to take advantage of each individual race, especially early in the Chase, to gain those points back. I hope that by the time we come around to Phoenix (the penultimate race in November), we're back in championship position -- whether we're first, second or third. As long as we go into the last race with a reasonable shot, that's all we can ask for."
BUSY MONTH: Kyle Busch, Las Vegas' other representative in the Nextel Cup Series, will be keeping busy during the month of October.
In addition to running five Nextel Cup races, Busch will compete in two Busch Series races (Kansas City Speedway and Lowe's Motor Speedway) and two NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races (Martinsville Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway).
ALMOST: In 13 career Cup starts at Talladega Superspeedway, Tony Stewart has four runner-up finishes and a third-place finish -- but no victories. That doesn't bother Stewart, who finished second in the spring race at Talladega.
"You can say the track hasn't been kind to me with as many second-place finishes as we've had, but there's 41 guys who didn't have it as good as we had it those days," Stewart said.
"There have been a lot of days where we ran second and it was as good as a win for us -- the spring race was a perfect example. We knew we didn't have the best car, but we ended up with a second-place finish. That was the best we could do and we left the track with smiles on our faces."
Stewart is fifth in points, 23 behind Johnson, going into Sunday's race at Talladega.
FULLER ON BOARD: Las Vegas resident Rod Fuller, who earned his first career NHRA Top Fuel national-event victory last month at Memphis Motorsports Park, has signed a contract extension to drive for David Powers Motorsports through the 2008 season.
GOOD CAUSE: Robby Gordon's helmet, which was thrown at Michael Waltrip's car during the Sept. 18 race at New Hampshire International Raceway, fetched $51,100 in an eBay auction.
Gordon donated the money to an employee relief fund set up by Harrah's -- one of Gordon's longtime sponsors -- to help Harrah's employees affected by the recent hurricanes.
DRIVER CHANGE: Fabrizio Del Monte of Italy will replace Bjorn Wirdheim in the No. 4 car for HVM Racing for the two remaining Champ Car World Series races, the team announced this week.
Del Monte, 24, made his Champ Car debut at the season opener in Long Beach in April, where he finished 16th for Jensen Motorsports in that team's only outing of the season.
Wirdheim's best finish in 11 starts this season with HVM was his sixth-place effort in last weekend's Hurricane Relief 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
"We are pleased to welcome Fabrizio to the team," HVM owner Keith Wiggins said. "We intend to give him a very good car and our best efforts.
"We have worked hard with Bjorn to make him comfortable in the car and this showed in his strong performance in Las Vegas. He is a talented driver but there was not the budget to retain him."
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