Stewart’s walk-off win in the season finale, however, didn’t exactly prevail in a landslide among voting by members of the news media.

Trevor Bayne’s historic Daytona 500 victory – which opened the year on a spectacular note at Daytona International Speedway – barely missed out on the No. 1 spot. Below are the top 10 vote-getters from 2011.

1-Tony Stewart’s Homestead-Miami Clincher

Stewart trailed Carl Edwards by three points entering the 10th and final race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup™. Both drivers had predicted the championship wouldn’t be decided until the final lap, and they were right. Edwards, who started on the pole, led the most laps while Stewart yo-yoed through the field after fixing damage to the front of his Chevrolet. Amazingly, Stewart took the lead with 36 laps remaining. Edwards, in second place, stayed in full-out pursuit mode until the checkered flag waved, but finished 1.306 seconds behind Stewart. Both drivers scored 2,403 points with the tiebreaker – five wins to one – falling in Stewart’s favor.

2-Trevor Bayne’s Daytona 500 Win

Winning The Great American Race is a career achievement no matter how many races or championships are won elsewhere. Example: Seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt needed 20 starts to win his Daytona 500 at age 46. All of which made Bayne’s victory both surprising and historic. Bayne, at age 20 years and one day, was making just his second NASCAR Sprint Cup start, although his team – the legendary Wood Brothers – had won the Daytona 500 on four previous occasions. Bayne, who started 32nd and led only the final six laps as a record 74 lead changes were recorded became the youngest Daytona 500 winner and just the seventh to make the race his first NASCAR Sprint Cup victory. The win was Ford’s 600th and 98th for the Wood Brothers.

3-Brad Keselowski’s Wreckers-to-Checkers Win at Pocono

Playing hurt is the measure of athletic success, as Brad Keselowski won August’s Good Sam RV Insurance 500 at Pocono Raceway just days after breaking his left ankle in a road course testing accident. Few might have projected a healthy Keselowski as a Pocono favorite. He’d won at Kansas Speedway earlier in the summer, but came to Pennsylvania ranked 21st in points. The race turned out to be a coming-out party for the 2010 NASCAR Nationwide Series champion, who followed the performance with three more top-three finishes capped by a Bristol victory, a Chase wild card berth and a fifth place finish in final NASCAR Sprint Cup standings.

4-Jeff Gordon’s 85th NASCAR Sprint Cup Win

Four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon fell short in his title bid, but the 2011 season was his first with multiple victories since 2007. He broke a 66-race winless streak at Phoenix International Raceway in February, added another win at Pocono Raceway in June and scored a historic 85th career victory in a weather-delayed AdvoCare 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway in September. Atlanta’s victory gave Gordon sole possession of third among all NASCAR Sprint Cup winners, breaking a tie with NASCAR Hall of Fame member Bobby Allison and soon-to-be-inducted Darrell Waltrip.

5-Regan Smith’s Southern 500 Win

What Trevor Bayne began in February, Regan Smith continued in May. Smith entered Darlington Raceway’s SHOWTIME Southern 500 with a lean resume to say the least: no wins, top fives or top 10s in 104 NASCAR Sprint Cup starts. Smith, then 27, became the upset winner of NASCAR’s oldest “crown jewel.” He led just the final 11 laps and held off Carl Edwards by 0.196 seconds to give Furniture Row Racing – a team headquartered in Colorado – its first series victory.

6-Jimmie Johnson’s Aaron’s 499 Win at Talladega

At the time, Jimmie Johnson’s final-lap victory – with an assist by teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. – appeared to be an early harbinger of a sixth consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. Johnson’s second Talladega Superspeedway win – and 54th overall – boosted him from fourth to second in the point standings. The race matched records for lead changes (88) and margin of victory under electronic scoring (0.002 seconds).

7-Paul Menard Holds Off Jeff Gordon to Win Brickyard 400

Surprise winners in 2011, take three. For much of its 19 years, Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Brickyard 400 had been won by the greatest names in NASCAR: Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Jarrett, Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt, bill Elliott – champions all. No first-time winners in the bunch – until this July. Midwesterner Paul Menard wound up kissing the start-finish line bricks after prevailing in a torrid battle with four-time Brickyard 400 winner Jeff Gordon. Menard joined Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne and SHOWTIME Southern 500 winner Regan Smith to score a first victory on the schedule’s largest stages.

8-Austin Dillon Becomes Youngest NASCAR Camping World Truck Champion

Though a number of young drivers have used their experience in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series as a springboard to NASCAR Sprint Cup success – think Carl Edwards, among others – veteran drivers, for the most part, have had a stranglehold on its championships. Only Travis Kvapil (age 27 in 2003) was younger than 30 in the series’ first 16 seasons. All that changed in 2011 as third-generation driver Austin Dillon, 21, became the youngest to win an NCWTS title. Dillon, a two-time winner, finished six points ahead of NASCAR national series veteran Johnny Sauter. Dillon, Richard Childress’ grandson, returned a title to RCR that Mike Skinner won in the series’ 1995 inaugural season.

9-Danica Patrick Posts Best Finish in NASCAR by a Female Driver

All agreed that Danica Patrick’s part-time NASCAR career was on the upswing in its second season. Patrick proved that with an exclamation point on March 5 with a solid, fourth-place finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The performance was record-setting: Patrick became not only the highest-finishing female driver in a NASCAR Nationwide Series race but also in any NASCAR national series event. Patrick’s feat broke a record from NASCAR’s earliest years – Sara Christian’s fifth-place finish in a NASCAR Sprint Cup (then Strictly Stock) race on Oct. 2, 1949 at Heidelberg, Pa.

10-2010 Sunoco Rookies-of-the-Year Win Championship

Two NASCAR national series champions gave media and fans yet another reason to keep an eye on the newcomers. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., whose uneven performance nearly cost him his job with Roush Fenway Racing in 2010, recovered to claim NASCAR Nationwide Series Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors. Roush’s faith was rewarded as Stenhouse won twice en route to the 2011 championship. Austin Dillon’s rookie of the year run in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series wasn’t quite so dramatic but like Stenhouse, he “graduated” to the champion’s chair. The season marked the first time that both Nationwide and truck rookies became champions in their sophomore years.

“Unfortunately, our result in the season-ending race at Homestead on Sunday was not what we had hoped for as a team. In my frustration with the loss of my transmission early in the race, I let my emotions get the better of me. I regret having done this and apologize to the sponsors of Penske Racing , to NASCAR, its fans, to the media and in particular, Dr. Jerry Punch.”

UPDATE: Penske Racing has also issued a statement on the incident:
“Penske Racing extends its apologies to Dr. Jerry Punch, our media partners and our sponsors and fans for Kurt Busch’s inappropriate actions in Homestead on Sunday. These actions do not represent Penske Racing and are inconsistent with the company’s standards for behavior, respect for others and professionalism. This matter is being reviewed internally with no further comment at this time.”

Here is the video but before watching it be warned that Kurt Busch uses some strong profanity and it is NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

TALLADEGA, Ala.—Kyle Busch opened his media availability Friday at Talladega Superspeedway with an announcement—that he’ll field a full-time, fully sponsored Nationwide Series team in 2012.

Though Busch said the sponsor and driver lineup would be revealed later, he did allow that he will compete in a number of the Nationwide races in his own Toyota, as well as running events in the series for Joe Gibbs Racing.

“It’s safe to assume that I’ll be running in some Nationwide races at Kyle Busch Motorsports,” Busch told Sporting News before Sprint Cup practice. “I will also still commit to my current obligations that I have at JGR and run over there, too.

“I’ll be split between two Nationwide teams essentially, driving some races. What number that’s going to be is yet to be decided. Certainly, we’ve gone over it with JGR and everything. This is definitely nothing new to those guys.”

Busch will continue to field his No. 18 Toyota Tundra in NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series next year.

“We’ve been going through this process now for about four months, so we’re ready and excited that the opportunity has finally come that we can move up to the Nationwide Series,” said Busch, who is the career leader in Nationwide victories with 51.

“We wanted to do that at Kyle Busch Motorsports now for a couple of years. … This just kind of takes us to the next level, and we’d like to make it a long-term partnership that it helps out over time with NASCAR and the series—and making sure Kyle Busch Motorsports can stay going.”

He becomes only the second driver in the history of the Chase to win the first two races of the 10-race playoff for the title. It is his 41st career victory and his third time in Victory Lane at NHMS.

After qualifying 20th in the 43-car starting field for the Sylvania 300, Stewart worked his way up through the field to run consistently in the top-10. Good pit strategy and a car that continued to improve as the race wound down gave him the opportunity to take the lead and charge to the checkered flag.

With the victory, Stewart takes control of the standings by seven points with eight races remaining.

Chase race number three is set for October 2, 2011 at Dover International Speedway.

An interview with TONY STEWART and DARIAN GRUBB

KERRY THARP: We’re roll right into our post race press conference for today’s race winning team. We’re joined right now by crew chief Darian Grubb.

Darian, talk about the 14 car, two for two so far in the Chase races, coming back to New Hampshire where you had your heart broken earlier, just talk about today’s win and what it means.

Darian Grubb: It’s just a huge day for the entire 14 team and what we’ve done to battle back from all the adversity we had in the middle of the year, like you brought up and reminded me again how we ran out last year with one to go. It’s bittersweet just because we had that last year. But to come out this year, second race of the Chase, win the first two, we feel very honored and very lucky to have had two weeks go our way.

KERRY THARP: We’ll take some questions for Darian.

Q. When y’all were in the doldrums, did you sense this coming or did you have no idea when you were going to climb out of this?

Darian Grubb: It was one of those where we kind of had no idea. We had a really good start to the year, had good race cars, fast race cars, chances to win, strategies to win, got beat over and over and over. It beat us down. Middle of the year we couldn’t hit on anything that made it better. Rode the same, didn’t have feedback or anything that was positive. Everything was just kind of there.

The last few weeks we started getting better. I think it was the same time at Michigan that Tony said we weren’t Chase contenders even if we made the Chase. I think everybody started taking an extra load, working harder, getting faster.

Q. Tony brought this up in Victory Lane. Didn’t make it clear what it was about. He spoke at some length and said, We dropped some dead weight earlier this week and it helped a lot this weekend. Can you explain what he was talking about there?

Darian Grubb: I’ve heard a lot of people talk about it, but I haven’t heard what he was talking about. I know he went and did a lot of dirt racing and had a lot of fun this week, kind of unloaded everything. Maybe it was a lot of dead weight off his mind.

Q. No personnel changes in the team?

Darian Grubb: Not that I know of. Maybe he’s talking about me and I just don’t know it yet (laughter).

Q. Can you speak to the success this team has had here this year. You come here in July, you run 1 2, win the pole, win the pole again and the race. What is it about this place that suits your style here?

Darian Grubb: We’re not really sure. We have fast race cars from the time we started at Stewart-Haas Racing. We had good, consistent weekends. Even crashed a car here at one point in practice, brought out the backup, started on pole, ran top five with it that week.

It’s just a good track for Ryan (Newman) and Tony both. Makes our job a whole lot easier at Stewart-Haas Racing. The drivers know what they need here, what the feel is they’re looking for. If they don’t have it in Happy Hour, or even the times before that, they tell us quick. We make sure we keep them filled in on what the weather is going to do for the race day so we can make sure. Tony was excited when he saw the sun come out today and it got a little slick.

Q. Obviously this became a fuel mileage issue today. Can you tell us where you were in terms of fuel at the end as opposed to a year ago.

Darian Grubb: We actually were two laps to the good at the end this time. I pushed the window from the run before longer than most people and pitted two laps later than the 33 to make sure I had a little bit of a cushion. Had good fuel mileage today. Tony did a great job saving when he needed to. I semi cut him loose, wanted him to hang with the 33 (Clint Bowyer). I didn’t think they could make it. If they did, I wanted to make sure he was close enough to make a run if they ran out. He did a great job on that. Didn’t use any more fuel than we had to. Had two laps left.

Q. Was he instructed to save fuel at any point during the last five to 10 laps?

Darian Grubb: I told him to run fast enough to keep up with the 33 but don’t push any harder than you have to. If there’s a chance you can pass him, go get it, then we’ll go into save mode after that. We weren’t going to give up a good finish to try and beat him, but then again we weren’t going to ride and save fuel to guarantee we had a good finish.

Q. Just the elation this team felt when they saw Clint run out. Did you think he had enough to go to the finish?

Darian Grubb: I thought he was going to be close. He pitted two laps before we did, we knew he was going to be at least closer than we were. If he was going to be pushing it that hard and still think he could make it, we knew we were going to be right there with him at least. Our mileage from what we were doing that window wise before that was a little bit better than what they had.

KERRY THARP: Tony Stewart has joined us. He’s today’s race winner. This is his 41st win in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, obviously his second straight win, his third victory here at New Hampshire. This is Tony’s 16th top 10 here at New Hampshire in 26 races. Good track record here. He’s the points leader by seven points over Kevin Harvick.

Tony, just talk about another strong performance today by the 14 team. You’re two for two.

TONY STEWART: Yeah, it was definitely an awesome ending to the day for sure. It was rough getting there. The first two thirds of the race I think we kind of hung around 10th or 12th, not by choice or design. Just seemed like that’s as far as we could get at the time. We were in a lot of traffic. Just seemed like a lot of guys would get stuck in traffic and kind of maintain position. There were only a couple guys you could see that really could make headway and drive through. It seemed like the closer we got to the front, the better our car drove.

We may not have been the best car at the end. Clint was just a tick better than us. I definitely did not know he was in a situation to worry about fuel. So the good thing is Darian told us we were two, three laps to the good. I got to run hard all the way to the end.

Seemed like when we got in the top five or six cars there, we had pretty good lap times. Like I say, we weren’t the fastest car, but we were solid and could maintain that pace the whole last 100 laps.

KERRY THARP: Congratulations again on the victory. We’ll take questions now.

Q. Tony, ever since you were on TV in Victory Lane, the buzz all around the track and Internet is wondering what you meant when you said, We dropped some dead weight earlier this week.

TONY STEWART: We’re just going to leave it at that.

Q. Could we ask if that was

TONY STEWART: You can’t ask anything. It is what it is. That’s all it was is what you said. That’s where we’ll leave it.

Q. Darian said there’s not been any personnel changes on the team.

TONY STEWART: No, there hasn’t.

Q. Can you talk to the success your team has had here this year.

TONY STEWART: Loudon has been awful good to us this year for sure. Ryan did a great job both of races of being fast in practice, getting the pole. I’m not sure exactly how their day shook out, what they fought during the day. But in the spring we started up front and we were able to stay up there all day, just keep working and chiseling away at it.

Today was a lot harder run at it from 20th. We just kind of stuck to the plan. We never tried anything trick to get us up there. We just stuck to the plan. There was the one stop where about half the field came in. That took us from about 10th or 12th up to 7th. May have been four or five guys that pitted there. It just seemed like we got close enough to the front at that point, that’s when we finally got in range when we could do something and make some ground.

We got back there with some cars that we just got stuck behind. We got stuck around the 56, the 31. It’s all ’cause we’re running the same speed. It seemed like once we got up there in a little better air, we were able to take advantage a little bit better.

Q. What kind of momentum do you get from the two wins? You’re a confident guy. Going into next week, what does this do for you?

TONY STEWART: It’s huge. When you talk about momentum, that racecar doesn’t know anything about momentum. It knows what you put in it, it knows how we drive it. It doesn’t know stats, it doesn’t know anything other than just what’s put in it.

Momentum deals with people. It’s not just these first two races of the Chase, it was the two weeks leading before it, too. We haven’t finished outside the top seven now in the last four weeks. That’s huge for us. It’s huge for our guys.

We’ve had one of those seasons up to the Chase where we couldn’t do anything right. I mean, we couldn’t get it clicking. We couldn’t get through all the bad luck. It seems like every week something would happen and we’d have to try to dig ourselves out of a hole the rest of the day.

I’m hoping and praying that we’re through that bad luck string now and things are hopefully going to click the next eight weeks.

Q. Darian touched on this, you said yourself a few weeks back you might be wasting one of the Chase spots. I assume you don’t feel that way now. Did you see that coming, the turnaround, or was it a matter of time?

TONY STEWART: It happened in a week. We went from five laps down at Bristol to running third at Atlanta the next week. No, you don’t see it coming. It’s not like we say, Okay, this is what happened, this is what’s wrong, this is what you have to do to fix it. Like I said, we just had really weird luck this year. There’s been races where we just missed it, couldn’t get it happy, get the car happy. There’s been races where we’ve been a top five, top three car or winning car, something stupid happened, you finish 15th or 20th, you leave going, We missed an opportunity.

The potential’s been there all year. You wonder when the bad luck string is going to stop. You hope, like I said, it happens another eight weeks now. We hope we’re through it and we can keep clicking off top fives, 10s. If we could get a couple more wins, that would be awesome.

The thing about this sport is things change week to week. The one thing I think our organization is really good at is taking what we’re doing day to day. I mean, we don’t lose sight of where we’re at today worrying about two weeks down the road. We focus one day at a time. Obviously, stuff like the chassis that we’re going to run through the end of the year, Darian has those planned out, but we really just focus on the day that we’re on, what we can do to make the most of that day.

Q. You talk about the bad luck you suffered. You had some here last year in this race. Given the bad karma, you’re reaping good karma from the stuff you went through. Can you speak to the irony of running this race, Clint running out of gas after you ran out last year.

TONY STEWART: Yeah, it’s amazing that it’s happened like that. But Clint was one of the first guys that called last year and, as happy as he was he won the race, he knew how disappointing it was for us. He was one of the first guys that called and said, I’m sorry about what happened. You don’t want to win them that way and you don’t want to see guys lose them that way. This is a sport that guys have a high level of respect for what happens and how it happens in this sport. To have a win get away from you that way, it’s disappointing for anybody.

Sitting up here right now, we definitely know what it was like last year for him and can sympathize about it. It shows the character he has. He was one of the first guys on pit road to get to me and congratulate me. He was laughing about it. He’s thinking about the same thing of what we’re talking about, a how ironic it was that last year the roles were reversed. Shows what character he has, he’s a great guy. Like I say, you hate to see somebody losing races that way. You love winning, but you hate to see somebody lose a race that way.

Q. Tony, on the front straightaway where you look the lead, what was the technique behind that? When did you decide that was the point to make your move?

TONY STEWART: I mean, I planned it for 280 some odd laps. I knew he was going to run out of fuel right at that moment versus just driving through him and running over him, seems like it might be an easier option to turn left and run around him (laughter). That was the strategy all along. Just had to wait for that opportunity.

KERRY THARP: No follow up for that. We’ll go ahead.

TONY STEWART: Wow (laughter). And we were doing so good in here today.

Q. The comment you made going into Chicago about your Chase chances. Stunning turnaround going from feeling like you don’t have a chance, and now you have a pretty good chance. Can you talk about that stunning reversal of fortune for you.

TONY STEWART: I wish I could say you could predict it. I wish you could see it coming in the future. The hard thing is, as much as it turned for us, you never know what’s going to happen. Like I say, we hope the next eight weeks go this way.

The reality of it is you look at guys that are in the back half of the Chase right now, they’re guys that a lot of people expected to be in the top five, top three in the points right now. It shows that one or two bad days can put you in a bad spot pretty quick.

As much as we want to sit here and beat our chest and be proud of what we’ve done, and we are proud of what we’ve done these first two weeks, we got eight hard weeks to go here.

The celebrating isn’t going to last long. We got a lot of work to do. I’m proud of our group. I’m confident that we’ve got a group of guys that are very, very focused right now. Like we said, the cars don’t know anything about momentum, but the people do. This is the perfect scenario to go into these last eight weeks, for sure.

KERRY THARP: This is Tony’s eighth win in the Chase, ties for second with Carl Edwards.

Tony, Darian, congratulations. Thank you.

Following Harvick and Earnhardt, race winner Tony Stewart and crew chief Darrian Grubb sat down to discuss winning the first race of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. The win was Stewart’s third at Chicagoland Speedway and his first of the 2011 season.

First Up: Series points leader and 2nd place finisher Kevin Harvick along with 3rdd place fnisher Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Next up is race winner Tony Stewart and crew chief Darrian Grubb.

YOU’VE WON HERE BEFORE. TALK ABOUT THIS WEEKEND AT THE WORLD CENTER OF RACING

“I’m excited to get back after the Daytona 500 itself, after leading the most laps with our U.S. Army Chevrolet; and I’m excited just the same this week to have Bass Pro Shops and the NRA on our No. 39 Stewart-Haas car. And the tandem drafting is something I look forward to, much more so than the way it used to be, racing-wise. So we’ll see if we can have some fun and put on a good show. It’ll be interesting to see what the weather lets us do here in the next couple of days. I don’t know how much track time we’re going to get. But either way, I’m sure we can put on a good show for the fans on Saturday night.”

“I’m not a fan at all of blocking and if you don’t block on an oval, you shouldn’t block on a road course; and there are a lot of guys who get in the bad habit of blocking on a road course, especially in Turn 7 and Turn 11 there at Infineon. It’s difficult to be able to work through some of those things when somebody does block in front of you. However his whole retaliation thing worked out, that’s not for me to talk about or say.  But it is frustrating. I had guys that blocked me and (I) let them know about it and I got turned around myself twice in Turn 11. So, the blocking part is not cool at all. And it’s something that we as drivers have to address and gain a little more respect out of each other so that we’re not doing that. We can have great racing and great passing there without the blocking.”

DENNY HAMLIN SAID A WHILE AGO THAT SOME OF HIS CREW GUYS OR YOUR CREW GUYS WALKED BY AND SAID HOW YA’ DOING, TEAMMATE.  DOES THIS TANDEM RACING ACTUALLY MEAN THAT YOU’VE GOT 42 POTENTIAL TEAMMATES OUT THERE? DO YOU BECOME MORE FRIENDLY JUST FOR THESE FOUR SUPERSPEEDWAY RACES THAN YOU WOULD ANY OTHER TIME?

“It’s kind of ironic how some of the things work out because we always talk about how much we work with our teammates and here a teammate means a lot in the essence that it may not be your true teammate, your shop mate, but it may be a teammate of another team that helps push you or work with you in Daytona as well as Talladega and both times got involved in somebody else’s crash. I texted Denny as I was getting in my airplane leaving Talladega I said let’s try it again in Talladega. And he said all right. And in saying that, you can try all you want to try to make a plan to do that and it might not work out. Our cars do work good together. Communication-wise, we’re on top of things it seems like in the car. So it’s a difficult situation and something we’ve had to work through as teams and as drivers and crew chiefs to work with me being on somebody else’s radio frequency or vice-versa. But it’s something that makes it a lot more interesting for me here, coming to the race.”

HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL YOU HAVE?

“I don’t know the exact number. I’m going to say 11. It’s not the whole garage. And at the same time, you don’t have to have somebody else’s radio frequency, it just helps. If you get somebody that you’re working with, it’s like a dance partner. You don’t need to communicate. Even just like body language in dancing, you have body language in the way you’re driving the race car so you have an idea. But it does help to be able to see the next group of cars or the next two-wide group of cars or if the track is blocked in front of you when you’re getting pushed. I think it was here in the 500 that (Jeff) Gordon was pushing me and I thought he was going to drive me right into the biggest crash in my life and we ended up missing it (laughs). But he couldn’t see. Every situation is different and the extra communication can be a benefit and it can be a hindrance.”

AT THIS POINT IN THE SEASON WE’RE AT THE SIX-MONTH POINT WITH 16 RACES IN THE BOOK; YOU’VE BEEN OUT TO THE WEST COAST SEVERAL TIMES, WHAT’S THE FATIGUE FACTOR FOR YOU AND YOUR RACE TEAM?

“The fatigue-factor shouldn’t be there. If we’re manned correctly and the guys are doing their jobs and we’ve torn up a couple of race cars but it hasn’t been outrageously difficult for us this year. And you know it going in what to expect of the schedule and of the season and when the breaks are and when they’re not. Other guys have had to fluctuate their schedules a little bit on Mondays and sometimes on Sundays to do different things so they can have a little bit of time to themselves sometime on Thursday morning before they fly out on Thursday afternoon. So it’s kind of up to the crew chief to make sure that they’re flexible enough to get the job done and do the things that they need to do to be 100 percent when they get to the race track.”

WE’RE TRYING TO NAIL DOWN EXAMPLES OF TANDEM RACING IN RECENT YEARS AND THE 2008 DAYTONA 500 COMES TO MIND WHEN KURT (BUSCH) PUSHED YOU AROUND THAT LAST COUPLE OF LAPS

“Actually it was just the back straightaway on the last lap. He pushed me the length o the straightaway from (Turn) 2 to 3. But in saying that, Kurt and I actually did work on some to tat tandem-style drafting and pushing in practice when we tested here with the brand new race cars. Actually I should say when we tested at Talladega. So we had a little bit of experience. So we had a little bit of experience before we got to the 500 in February and it all just worked out to be there at the last lap the last second; and having that experience gave us a little bit more confidence to do what we did. We had done that with other drivers, but we had never done it as teammates before that point.”

CAN YOU COMMENT ON THE FACT THAT 30 YEARS AGO, MILITARY GUYS WITH DISABILITIES WERE NO LONGER ABLE TO SERVE; BUT TODAY, THEY ARE STILL SERVING.

“I know that the Army in particular has a screening process when they’re working with new soldiers. But when they have soldiers that have experience and understand the team commitment and what it is to serve, even having a prosthetic limb, they still allow them to come back and I think there is a lot of merit in that. I’ve seen it, and you’ve probably seen it yourself, going to a place like Walter Reed, those soldiers are literally excited to get back; and after they get back moving again, after they get a bionic arm or a prosthetic limb attached to them, they’re excited to get back with their team and their command and be a part of the U.S. Army and protecting our freedom. You’re right in that the mindset has changed a little bit with technology. Back in the day I’m sure there were people that got pushed to the side even though they were willing because of their physical situation, so it’s nice to see technology help and tie that mental, physical and emotional strength together for soldiers that want to go back to battle.”

YOU SPOKE EARLIER ABOUT THE BLOCKING ISSUE. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR STANDING UP FOR THAT? YOU COULD HAVE A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE AND NOT EVERYBODY IS GOING TO AGREE. IF THERE IS AN ISSUE, HOW DO YOU CONVINCE PEOPLE?
“The best example I can give you is what we dealt with here for our first experience here in Daytona when we were working with the tandem drafting and the speed difference between the cars. There was the most respect I’ve ever seen out of all drivers in a Cup race when it came to not blocking somebody with a run because you have the opportunity to get that run back. The racing was good because of that. That same respect doesn’t carry over to road courses. So that’s what I guess as a group, us drivers have to work on; and I’m sure there were plenty of phone calls and plenty of texts and plenty of confrontations whether good or bad after that race that helps us work in that direction. But every time we go to the race track it’s a new set of circumstances; different cars, different tires and different brake packages that we work with to try to make the cars better and faster and we have to develop, I guess our respect develops last of all of those things.”

COMPARING ROAD COURSES TO OVAL TRACKS HOW DO GET THROUGH THAT MINDSET TO HAVE RESPECT?

“There is a fine balance. Of all the things that we work on, it’s probably the last thing and the most underdeveloped thing that we have as a group in our garage is respect when it comes to certain drivers at certain times. Yeah, there are times when I’m blocked at Dover or Charlotte or places like and it’s much less often than it is the road course. The road course is the most you’ll ever get blocked or blocking is a part of what we do as a whole. Go back to ’79 when Donnie (Allison) ran Cale (Yarborough) down. He was blocking of sorts. You saw what happened because of it.”

THAT WAS THE LAST LAP AS OPPOSED TO LAP 50

“But it’s every lap is like a last lap. You look at the way our competition is. We race every lap like it’s the last lap. There are times when it does slow down a little bit. California and Michigan; big places, Pocono, where you can only do so much, there comes a point where you have to save your race car and save your tires and save your brakes. But on restarts, especially with the double-file restart, it’s definitely added to the excitement and definitely added to us drivers having to have a little bit more demand for respect because of the hard racing that we do. We’re literally going for everything we possibly can; and if that means somebody else’s throat, that’s part of it sometimes. Going for their throat and ripping their throat out are two different things.”

ON THE VISION ISSUES THAT COME WITH THE TANDEM DRAFTING, IS THERE A WAY THEY COULD ALLEVIATE THAT?

“It’s not even so much the spoiler as it is when you’re in the car and you’ve got a car in front of your and you’re in the banking and it’s almost like their roof actually blocks it because you’re looking up and out to the left. And the way our cars work and the way you draft, typically you draft off the right side of the bumper, not the left side; so that puts you right in the center line of the guy’s car in front of you, which blocks say 20 degrees left or right. And that’s just the way the physics work out with the way the cars draft. I’m not saying that there is nothing that could be done. But what would be done would probably be more work than it’s worth.”

PENSKE RACING SEEMS TO BE IN AN UPSWING. AS A FORMER PENSKE DRIVER, WHAT HAS MADE THEM SO QUICK RECENTLY?

“The OC swings in the every part of the history of our sport. Hendrick, I would say, has the least swing or at least maybe the longest swing, depending on how you look at it. But Roush, Childress, Penske; they’re all typically up and down teams that I’ve seen at least in the 10 years I’ve been a part of this sport; whereas Hendrick has been the benchmark, at least obviously the last five years, but even before that, with the competitiveness and the lack of peaks and valleys in their performance. So, no; no secrets. Sometimes it’s a part of racing. It’s a part of teamwork. It’s a part of sometimes being complacent and therefore not.”

YOU TOOK A TOUR OF THE NASCAR ARCHIVES, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT?

“It was really neat to see some of the old trophies. I like old things in general. But to see old historical parts of racing is cool but to see it here at Daytona with all the different spectrums of racing was pretty neat as well. I think the oldest trophy in there was 1905, which I didn’t even know they were building trophies then. And some of the cool old helmets that they had; one was Wynn’s Friction Proofing, which was a sponsor of mine back in my open-wheel days. So it was pretty cool to see an old open-faced helmet. I shouldn’t even say open-faced; it was an open-eared helmet (laughs) from back in the day that carried the same sponsor. It was something I did probably 50 years later. Just things like that. And the fact that it is open for the fans to see, is good. A lot of it is France-family-owned but either way, fans can go in and see it and gain a little bit more appreciation for the history of Daytona, be it the beach or the big oval.”

Photo by Jared C. Tilton - Getty Images for NASCAR

Perhaps one could label Busch’s experience during his first Southern 500 as the ultimate example of the old idiom that “ignorance is bliss.” Such was the case for Busch back in September 2001.

“My first (Southern 500) there, I actually slipped my way into the pole,” Busch said of his surprising lap of 168.048 mph (29.263 seconds). I slipped into the pole because it was a 95-degree day, Labor Day weekend back then, and the way that the heat was, I didn’t understand that you needed to slow down when it’s hot out. I thought that you could still hold it wide open through Turn 2 and I accidentally did and beat Jeff Gordon for the pole. My first time, qualifying, Turn 2 at Darlington was one of the most exhilarating experiences because I was able to hold it wide open through there when you weren’t supposed to. It’s a sense of being young and dumb and not realizing the exact reality of how fast you can go through a corner. The exhilaration when I jumped on the back straightaway of, ‘wow, I am going so fast. I’m heading into Turn 3 and I just need to slow it down and not overdrive (Turns) 3 and 4.’

“What was funny is that Jeff and I talked (before the race) and he said, ‘here, I let you lead the first lap because we need to get single-file,’” Busch recalled of the moments leading up to the Sept, 2, 1001 race. “Just yield and Jeff said he’d go right on by me. Well, I led the first 67 laps and he didn’t expect that. It was just one of those unique weekends, being a rookie and not understanding a lot about the track and just kind of going off of gut instinct.”

Busch went on to lead a total of 74 laps in his first Southern 500 and led as late as Lap 129 before a mid-race incident sent him behind the wall for repairs. He returned to finish 39th, completing 316 of the 367 laps. The race was won under caution by Dodge-driving Ward Burton, who started 39th and led only the final eight circuits.

Busch’s most historically significant and highly-publicized Darlington race to date was the March 16, 2003 Carolina Dodge Dealers 400. In that race, Busch finished as runner-up to Ricky Craven in one of the most incredible finishes in the sport’s history.

The margin of victory was a mere 0.002 seconds and holds a tie for the closest finish in the history of electronic scoring and timing along the NASCAR Sprint Cup circuit. The Busch/Craven finish held sole possession of that distinction until Jimmie Johnson beat runner-up Clint Bowyer by the exact same margin in the Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Superspeedway last month.

“The more I tell the story, the more I feel that I might can chop down that two-thousandths of a second and maybe finally wind up winning the thing,” Busch chuckled about the wild finish that will forever be a prominent clip on the sport’s highlight reel. “It was one of the most dramatic finishes ever in NASCAR and it will always be a part of history. I was proud to be part of it there that day.

“I can remember it just like it was yesterday,” Busch said of the amazing final few yards of his battle with Craven. “I went into turn three trying to give Ricky the impression that I was gonna go high, yet I cut the wheel down low. I was trying to make sure I made it as wide as I could getting in, so he couldn’t commit to a line. When you commit to a line quicker, obviously, you can generate speed through the corner. So I went into (Turn) three low and there was no way I could hold it down like I needed to.

“The car pushed up a little bit and I knew he’d go low, so I didn’t want to come back across his nose because I would have spun out and finished as the last car on the lead lap,” Busch continued. “So I had to just carry the momentum towards the high side and get as much throttle-on time as I could. He started rubbing the left-rear, the door, the A-post, and as soon as he got up to my front tire, it jerked the wheel out of my hand and yanked my car completely into his. That killed my momentum and then we stayed locked from there on. I grabbed as much of the wheel as I could and finally tugged it back to the right to get off of him by the time we got to the start-finish line, but my momentum had been killed after that. It was just a hard-fought battle and one that they’ll probably be talking about forever.”

But, there are more details to the story that didn’t come out at the time.

“The fact was that my power steering went out late in that race and by the time it got down to those last couple of laps, I had no power steering at all,” said Busch. “The TV and radio guys were reporting that I’d just abused my stuff so badly that I’d used everything up; I just had burned the tires slap off the thing. It made for such a great story that I never bothered to mention that if I’d still had my power steering and didn’t have to manhandle the car like I was, I probably could have held Ricky off. Regardless, it was a historical race and I was so proud and excited to have been part of it. Ricky has always been such a first class guy and I have always had the utmost respect for him.”

Busch started 14th and finished a strong third in last year’s SHOWTIME Southern 500. “We really fought hard in that race,” he recalled. “I hadn’t had a solid run like that at Darlington since Craven and I battled it out for that win. It came down to a strategy where I though two tires would be the way to go at the end. We had the right strategy, but we just didn’t have enough speed at the end. I think (winner) Denny Hamlin and (runner-up) Jamie McMurray were stronger than us. Darlington is a track that is so much fun to race when you finish good and that was the case there last year.”

This weekend’s Darlington action gets under way on Friday with practice scheduled from 11:30 a.m. till 1:30 p.m. and from 2:15 p.m. till 3:00 p.m. Friday’s 5:10 p.m. single round of qualifying will establish Saturday’s 43-car starting field. Saturday’s SHOWTIME Southern 500 (367 laps, 501.3 miles) has a 7:30 p.m. EDT starting time and features live coverage by FOX-TV and MRN Radio.