Kurt comes into Saturday night’s LifeLock.com 400 fourth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings. He has one win thus far this season and five career top-10 finishes at Chicagoland.
Q. Kurt, big weekend ahead with eight events remaining in the Race to the Chase.
KURT BUSCH: It sure is. Chicago to me always feels like a second home just with my love of the city, my family being from that area of the country, just trying to put our Miller Lite Dodge in Victory Lane. Of course, Miller being close to our hearts up in Milwaukee now has a new headquarters in Chicago. So I will be there tomorrow at the big headquarters saying hello to some of our executives, of course telling them how great racing is to their program.
Q. I was wondering, how young is too young for a kid to start racing today, in your opinion? Would it have been advantageous for you to have started sooner?
KURT BUSCH: Well, it’s always a tough debate. It’s up to the family to decide if they want to go and pursue the racing.
You know, it’s not like a ball-and-stick sport where you just pick up a baseball glove, you go out and play T-ball with another group of teammates. A racing family really has to have that commitment from mom and dad and everybody. That’s why it’s tough to get involved at the entry level in racing.
Quarter midget racers, there’s kids all across the country that jump in them right away at six, seven years old. I didn’t get my first start in racing till I was 15. It just took my dad 15 years to explain to my mom that I’d be okay. So it’s having that relationship between the parents and the child and knowing that the child is ready for racing.
Sometimes go-karts could be dangerous because they don’t have the roll cage on them. That’s why a lot of kids and families head down the quarter midget direction. Legend car racing is where I started. Maybe if I did get a chance to start sooner, maybe it would have helped my career develop quicker. I couldn’t imagine going any quicker than what I did, starting at 15 and making it to Cup by 22.
Q. Do you wish there were more traditional programs like summer soccer leagues, more affordable ways for young kids to get started?
KURT BUSCH: Well, there are. You know, with the Bandoleros, Thunder Roadsters, Legend Cars, INEX has done a tremendous job making cars readily available for youngsters and families to get involved. You know, it comes down to sponsorship and how much money the parents want to throw in towards the racing.
But if you look around everywhere, there’s grass-roots levels starting up here, there and everywhere to get kids involved in racing. With our sport so prominent on TV these days, it’s real easy for kids to want to try to get involved.
Q. Could you talk quickly about Tony Stewart, what he’s been able to do as a driver/owner this year. He obviously had a win this weekend. He has 14 top 10s this year. Could you talk about what kind of you’ve seen.
KURT BUSCH: Well, it’s been tremendous to watch those guys come from nowhere and develop a team and cherry pick some of the top quality people at Hendrick, yet get them all under the same roof and get the best out of them. And they’ve done it in a short amount of time. It’s been quite remarkable to watch.
We all knew that Tony was very competitive and yet it was gonna be a matter of time before this team developed. I don’t think anybody expected this team to be as strong as they are right now. So it’s definitely neat to watch. It creates in the back of anybody’s mind, Hey, maybe I can go and do this. But I think you need to find special people to do it. That’s what Tony has done at Stewart Haas Racing, finding all these great people to help him get to where he is today.
Q. As a driver, can you imagine being a driver/owner, having all that responsibility on your plate?
KURT BUSCH: Oh, there definitely is, seven days a week, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. That’s the whole lingo from Vegas, 24/7. You’ve got to stay on top of it. There’s quite a bit of energy you have to put into it as well. So you have to find those key people that you can delegate the responsibilities to to help your workload be a bit easier.
I’m sure there’s fires that you have to put out every day. When you don’t want to continue to race for an owner, you have to absorb those fires because you are the key guy, the go-to guy now.
Q. It was about a year ago this week when he announced that he was going to split and become his own owner. What was your reaction after hearing that? Shocked, I guess?
KURT BUSCH: You know, it wasn’t shocking. But yet behind the scenes who knew what more he wanted to accomplish for Joe Gibbs Racing. And the fact that the sport is definitely changing enabled him to get these sponsors lined up and get these people lined up and create this environment to where he’s going to make more money if he’s an owner and driver at the same time.
So his marketability, the way he’s teamed up with Brand Sense, those guys have done a tremendous job to give him the exposure levels that bring in top-quality sponsors.
Q. How satisfying has this year been for you overall? You’ve struggled the last couple of years in the points, you haven’t made the Chase on a couple of occasions. How has your performance this year been reflective in the adjustments that have been made with the new car?
KURT BUSCH: Well, you said it right there at the end, the new car. It’s something to where we were behind the scenes thinking that we were going to be fine with this new car, yet we got hit with a steamroller when we debuted it basically in 2008 full-time. So it’s been a learning curve. We anticipated here at Penske Racing we could have just a few cars in our stable and take these cars that were more universal to all the different styles of tracks.
And basically what it’s gotten down to is the quantity of cars have gone back up, cars have taken on their own identity for specific racetracks. The fact that like today, I was sitting down looking at our notes from last year’s Chicagoland race, we just wadded it up and threw it in the trash can because we’ve changed everything.
So it’s great to be back on top. It’s satisfying to run consistent. We’ve had some tough days and we’ve turned those into good, solid finishes. That’s what a championship team does.
But right now we need to start pushing a little harder and crack Victory Lane a few more times and take those bonus points with us to the Chase.
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