Confidence in COT program has Busch eager at M'ville

2004 Cup Series champion Kurt Busch will share his thoughts in a weekly blog during the Chase for the Nextel Cup:

We've got five races behind us in the Chase and five more to go. The gap has widened between the top two cars -- Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson -- and the rest of the field, but there is plenty to race for these next five weeks.

We're putting our two winning cars back on the track -- the Michigan-winning car at Atlanta and the Pocono-winning car at Phoenix -- and we feel they can get into Victory Lane again. We're right on the brink of winning with our COT cars, and it wouldn't surprise me if we got a "W" before the season is complete.

Now we're off to Martinsville, where we finished 12th in the spring. Our COT program is light years ahead of where it was back then, and we think we'll be at the front of the pack. We're going to do everything we can to get as much out of these final five races as possible.

There are plenty of spots to make up in the Chase standings, and even if we can't catch the leaders, we're going to track down as many of the guys in front of us as we can.

At the halfway point

Despite the 26th place finish, a lot of good came from last weekend at Lowe's Motor Speedway, a track that has been an Achille's heel for us. Before the Miller Lite Dodge dropped a cylinder we had a top-five car and were tracking down the leaders. All of this despite our pit road run-in with the 01 car.

There is a ton to be positive about heading into these final five weeks of the season and a lot of ground to make up on the cars ahead of the Blue Deuce in the Chase.

The Miller Lite Racing team was really good in Friday practice, posting the sixth-fastest time during the session. We then went out early in qualifying and improved on our lap by nearly half-a-second, a time that held up pretty well until late in qualifying.

Our 2 car wound up in the eighth position, and we left the track confident we'd have a competitive car Saturday night, which hasn't always been the case in Charlotte. LMS is a track we've been strong on early in races, but just haven't been able to finish the deal on. We were looking to change that and gobble up a chunk of points that separated us from the top of the Chase heap.

From the drop of the green flag I could tell that Pat Tryson and the guys in the shop put a strong racecar under me. We moved up to the top-five pretty quickly and stayed there for about 180 laps, even leading three different times.

Pit strategies were all over the place -- you saw teams taking four tires, two tires and even no tires at different points in the race. It was a fuel-only stop that led to some trouble for us in the pits -- leaving my stall I collided with Mark Martin and sustained some right-front fender damage, which forced me to come down pit road on the next lap.

Admittedly I was pretty frustrated at the time, but PT did a excellent job keeping me focused and reminding me to be patient. We were at the back of the lead lap for the restart, but used some great pit strategy and a stout car to get back into the top five.

The Blue Deuce was tracking down the leaders when we dropped a cylinder, which forced us to nurse the car to the 26th place finish. It could have been a much better result, but as I said before, I think we've got a solid handle on that place now.

Until next time.
KB