#41- Kurt Busch was running fourth on the Coke Zero 400’s final restart at Daytona with two laps to go in overtime and was fighting for the win when he was hit from behind [by #22-Joey Logano] and sent sliding across the infield grass toward the finish line, which he crossed as the final car on the lead lap, finishing 23rd (SHR).
Kurt Busch’s Comments: ‘We positioned ourselves to be the car to get a good run off the bottom. It just didn’t work out with him (Joey Logano) trying to drive straight through us. And it would have worked out better if he would have pushed us. We could have had a shot at the #2 (Brad Keselowski). And with just the way that it turned out, I feel disappointed that I didn’t get the win for (Tony) Gibson (Crew Chief) and all these guy that work for our team. We did everything right tonight except cross the line where we were supposed to.’
Q) DO YOU EXPECT HIM TO PUSH YOU BECAUSE THAT’S HIS TEAMMATE IN THE LEAD? DOES THAT MAKE IT MORE UNDERSTANDABLE?
Busch: ‘On the last lap, there is so much going on. You can’t drive other people’s cars for them. I think that he made an aggressive mistake. You can’t go from fifth to first. There’s just no shot at it. And, it’s a shame that we ended up spun around and wrecked. We could have come out of here with the point lead.’
Q) YOU ARE SO GOOD AT PLATE TRACKS, IS IT A CONSOLATION KNOWING THAT YOU WERE SORT OF IN A SPOT TO GO FOR IT AT THE END?
Busch: ‘That’s what I always hope for. I hope to be right there where I was tonight on a green-white-checkered and one day the chips are going to fall in my direction. There’s no way that it can’t. It’s almost two rotations around a roulette wheel for how many times we’ve been here and haven’t won. But we’ll keep trying.’(Team Chevy)
Joey Logano’s comment: ‘It was hard fought for sure. Anytime you have an opportunity to win and you are in the top four or five or six on the last restart you know you have a shot at it. I was able to get Brad a good push to clear and get a Penske car to victory lane which is really cool. Todd Gordon made a great call to put four tires on which allowed us to be aggressive at the end. I hate that I got into Kurt (Busch) there at the end racing to the line. I had a run to turn up underneath him and when you do that the cars get free and then I was there and he tried to catch it and I was there again. It is a product of this racing but I hate that it happened. The last thing I want to do is hit someone like that. Unfortunately, it happened. Overall a solid day for us. The 2 was the fastest car and he deserved to win the race. We need to find a little more speed in our race car.’(Ford Performance)
