BIFFLE WINS FORD 400; BUSCH WINS NASCAR CHAMPIONSHIP

Kurt Busch won the inaugural NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series championship today and the second straight for car owner Jack Roush and Ford Racing.

As a result, Busch is now the third-youngest driver to win the championship at 26 years, 3 months, 17 days. Bill Rexford holds the record at 23 years, 8 months and 17 days while Jeff Gordon holds down the second spot after claiming his first championship at 24 years, 3 months and 27 days. Ironically, Busch and Gordon share the same birthday, August 4.

The driver’s championship is the seventh all-time for Ford in NASCAR’s top division and marks the second time that the manufacturer has won back-to-back titles.

PAST FORD CHAMPIONS · Ned Jarrett, who is Ford’s all-time race winner with 43, won his second series championship in 1965 and the first driver’s title for Ford.

· Pearson is the manufacturer’s only multiple champion as he won 27 races and captured 26 poles en route to back-to-back titles in 1968 and '69.

· Bill Elliott registered the first driver's championship for Ford in the modern era, which started in 1972, by 24 points over Rusty Wallace in 1988.

· The late Alan Kulwicki edged Elliott by the narrowest margin in NASCAR Winston Cup history when he led one more lap than Elliott and clinched the five-point bonus to win the title by 10 points in 1992.

· Dale Jarrett clinched his championship one race before the season-ending event in 1999 and eventually won by 201 points. As a result, the Jarretts joined the Pettys as the only father-son duo to win the NASCAR Winston Cup championship.

· Like Jarrett, Kenseth claimed the final NASCAR Winston Cup championship early after a xx finish at Rockingham sealed the deal. Kenseth gave car owner Jack Roush his first series title by posting one win, 11 top-five and a series-best 25 top-10 finishes. He took the points lead after a fourth-place finish at Atlanta in March and held that advantage for the final 32 weeks.

OTHER NOTES · Busch joins John Force (NHRA Funny Car) and Sebastien Bourdais (CART Champ car) as Ford’s other major series champions in 2004.

· Since debuting in 1998, Taurus has won 83 NASCAR Nextel Cup races, three driver’s championships (1999, 2003 and 2004) and three manufacturer’s championships (1999, 2000 and 2002).

· This is Jack Roush’s second NASCAR Nextel Cup championship, in addition to one NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (2000 with Greg Biffle) and one NASCAR Busch Series title (2002 with Biffle).

FORD'S NASCAR NEXTEL CUP CHAMPIONS Year Driver Car Owner Wins Poles 1965 Ned Jarrett Bondy Long 13 9

1968 David Pearson Holman-Moody 16 12

1969 David Pearson Holman-Moody 11 14

1988 Bill Elliott Harry Melling 6 6

1992 Alan Kulwicki Alan Kulwicki 2 6

1999 Dale Jarrett Robert Yates 4 0

2003 Matt Kenseth Roush Racing 1 0

2004 Kurt Busch Roush Racing 3 1

KURT BUSCH – No. 97 Sharpie/IRWIN Taurus – CHAMPIONSHIP STAGE INTERVIEWS -- CONGRATULATIONS. “Thank you, so much. It’s unbelievable to be able to put such an effort into what it takes to make a championship caliber team. Many things have to fall into place. Jimmy Fennig is a true leader and he really helped me understand what I needed to do with the race car to make it go fast. I have to thank my team and my sponsors, Sharpie and Irwin, and all of our associates. It’s wonderful.” WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE WHEEL BROKE? “It was an odd problem that hasn’t come up all year. We feel like we dodged a huge, huge, devasting proposition that would have taken us out of this championship and we pulled through.” YOU’RE THE CHAMP. “It’s an unbelievable deal. This is what a team does to win a championship – they persevere on a day such as this. All year long we’ve done things like this, whether we put ourselves in a hole or whether we had a small problem, I just can’t believe we were able to overcome all of that turmoil today.” WHAT ABOUT THE RIGHT-FRONT WHEEL? “Again, it had a big vibration those last 50 laps and it held on, but I’d like to put a cap on today and move on in what we did this year as a team, which was unbelievable. This championship is for Jimmy Fennig. I can’t believe it for our team, for everybody that has put work into this car, Jimmy has done the deal. That’s why I’m choked up is because there are heavy hearts in the NASCAR community with what we had to go through a few weeks ago with Hendrick and the problem they had. I love them truly and I want to donate anything that I can from this championship to them. My little brother was affected by this, so it hit home for us. It’s unbelievable.” YOU’LL GET TO CELEBRATE IN NYC. “It’s unbelievable for our sponsors and everybody that gets a chance to come to New York.” AND JACK? “Jack is just a true, true competitor. He’s a racer from the word go and that’s who I modeled myself after when I got to this point and he’s helped me get to this point. I was so far behind in 2001 and made so many mistakes, but my sponsors stuck with me. We’ve got some great associate sponsors and we pulled through.”

MARK MARTIN – No. 6 Viagra Taurus – “It was a great effort by the Viagra team. We had a pretty good car. We put ourselves in a position to be a contender there and then we had a flat tire under caution, so I’m not gonna say it was bad luck. If it was bad luck, we would have had it under green. With the way things turned out, the best we could have done was fourth and we did that. I’m real proud and honored to work with these guys and I’m also honored just to be racing with these great young drivers out here. I’m gonna be watching them for a long time.” THOUGHTS ON JIMMY FENNIG WINNING THE TITLE? “It’s the greatest. Jimmy and I won an ASA championship in 1986 – it was that long ago. Both of us were racing the short tracks in the Midwest and dreaming of coming back NASCAR racing and I’m really, really happy for him.” A GOOD DAY. “It was a great run. We had a little bit of adversity, but not too bad. It turned out really good.” YOU’VE GOT A GOOD TEAM. “The team fought hard all year. We came out 43rd in points leaving Daytona with our hearts broken and battled our way all the way back to fourth. I’m proud of them for that.” YOUR THOUGHTS NOW? “I’m glad it’s over. The guys did a great job. I’m proud of them and I look forward to next year. I’m gonna try to keep all of these guys together and we’re gonna make a real effort to be in first place at the end of this deal next year.”

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 National Guard/Subway Taurus – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – “This just goes to show everybody what this 16 team is capable of doing. We had an awesome car all day long. We just lost the track position because of fuel mileage and we just fought back and fought back. These guys had great pit stops and I just want to take a chance to thank everybody who has supported us this year. Subway, Coca-Cola, and Kraft foods – everybody. Then, of course, the National Guard standing beside us the whole year and all the soldiers, everything they do for our program. I’m just excited to be in Victory Lane here.” TALK ABOUT WHEN STEWART WENT OFF THE PACE? “I really thought we had a car to beat him. I was really good off the restarts. I thought I was gonna be able to pass him and I almost ran into him down there when his car ran out of gas on the restart. It was really close for us. That happened to me once before – we ran into a guy and, fortunately, that didn’t happen this time.”

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DEWALT Taurus – “It was a good day for Roush. The 16 won the race and that was awesome and the 97 won the championship, so that’s awesome for the whole team. We didn’t run very well again, but it’s good for the team. We just have to figure out how to get our stuff running like that.” LOOKING FORWARD TO THE OFF SEASON? “Yeah, I’m looking forward to a little time off and I’m looking forward to getting to work this winter and figure out what we’re doing wrong, so we can get running back up front again.”

RICKY RUDD – No. 21 Motorcraft Taurus – “Most of the year we would have taken that finish and been tickled to death and I still am, but in practice the day before I thought we had something that maybe could have challenged for a win and definitely didn’t have that today. But the guys were really smart on pit strategy there at the end. We ended up ninth. I don’t think we had a ninth-place car, but they were really smart on the strategy. I can’t really say that. We had a set of tires at the end of the race that really ran good. There seemed to be some big inconsistencies for us all day. We got one set of tires and just stayed on them and that was the best our car had run all day.” WHAT ABOUT THE FUEL STRATEGY? “That’s a heads-up call in the pits. Our car just wouldn’t work back there in that dirty air. In practice we didn’t really practice in all that dirty air and, evidently, when you get back there the car just doesn’t handle anywhere near the same, so we gambled on the strategy and the fuel. We knew we could make the fuel. We knew it would be tight, but the gamble was could you run that long on tires. We didn’t really know that, but we found out we could.”

CARL EDWARDS – No. 99 Roush Racing Taurus – “It was an excellent day for Roush Racing. The 99 team didn’t have as good a day as we wanted to, but we still ended up 14th, which was pretty awesome for how we ran. I just can’t say enough for how happy I am for Jack Roush and for Kurt Busch and for Greg Biffle. Mark Martin and everybody had such a great year and I’m excited. Hopefully, we get to run full-time with them next year and we can be up there fighting for that win.” YOU MUST BE READY FOR NEXT YEAR ALREADY. “Yeah, I’m really excited. Bob Osborne and I are really getting along well and I think that next year is gonna be awesome.” HOW HAS YOUR LEARNING CURVE BEEN? “It’s been 13 or 14 races and I feel like I belong running up there. I feel more comfortable racing with these guys and I feel like the learned curve has leveled out enough that we can start out next season expecting some great results.”

BIFFLE GIVES FORD A PERFECT 10 IN 2004 · Greg Biffle’s triumph today in the Ford 400 was his third career NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series win and second of the season (Michigan in August).

· The win also marked Ford’s 10th of the season, which is three more than last season.

· Ford now has 554 all-time series wins while Taurus has posted 84 points victories and 91 overall, including the Budweiser Shootout and All-Star races.

· Eight of Ford’s 10 race wins in 2004 came courtesy of Roush Racing (Kurt Busch, 3; Greg Biffle, 2; Matt Kenseth, 2; and Mark Martin, 1).

GREG BIFFLE PRESS CONFERENCE – TALK ABOUT THE FINISH. “I tell you, it’s unfortunately that the 12 car had trouble, Ryan Newman, but that was the determining factor to give me the opportunity to win today. There was no way we were gonna catch him. We were a lot faster than those guys, but four laps wasn’t gonna be enough. After I got around the 88, the 88 was running good today, and I had to race him hard for position and once I got around him I was just trying to catch those guys. I felt like I was better than the 20. I pretty much had a better race car than everybody, it’s just that track position and having the opportunity to pass them. I felt like I’d be able to get the 20 fairly easy. I mean, I had two laps and four corners to work our way around him, whether it was gonna be the top or the bottom, my race car was really fast on both spots. So I felt pretty good about having a chance to get by him. I heard some chatter on the radio and I kind of lost my focus there a little bit on the restart. One guy in the pits keyed up that normally doesn’t talk and said, ‘The 20 car is getting a fuel can out.’ Right then, I was listening to him and the 20 car just stopped in front of me and I jerked the wheel to the right to try not to hit him. I got off the gas on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the right and got back in the gas and I was looking around to see if the 24 or 48 was gonna be beside me. I didn’t want to wreck them or run into anybody and wreck my car, so once I realized I was clear of everybody, I knew it was gonna be clean sailing. That sucker just marched off all day.” WHAT DOES THIS WIN DO FOR MOMENTUM NEXT YEAR? “It does a lot for us. Our team has been this strong the second half of the season and all of the chase races. There again, we just haven’t had some of the finishes that we feel that we should have, but this is what the team is capable of. This is what I’m capable of as a driver when we have the right race cars at the race track and the aero balance is correct and the engine performs like it did today. That car is so easy to drive. I won Michigan in that car and should have won Kansas, but fuel mileage is an issue with us. I had to stop at Kansas with about 20 laps to go and I had to start back in 20th position and got all the way to third and just didn’t have a shot at the guys for the lead. This is that same race car. We’re trying to build some more like it and understand it better, but it certainly does a lot for our momentum. We feel like we’ve got our spot secured in the chase for the Nextel Cup next year. I feel 100 percent confident that as a driver and Doug as a leader of the 16 team, that we’re gonna be one of the guys in the chase next year.” WERE YOU AWARE THAT THE TITLE CONTENDERS WERE AROUND YOU? “I tell you what, that’s the toughest spot to be in ever in your life. You guys sitting out here asking the questions, everybody can put themselves in that position and think to yourself, ‘What am I gonna do here and how do I handle myself?’ I wanted to win the race. I had the car to win the race. I felt like we were entitled to win the race, if that sounds arrogant or not. But we had the fastest car and led a lot of the laps, but I was super conscious of what was going on around me. I knew when I went by Kurt that I was gonna have enough laps to get by the 48 and the 24 as well and knew I wasn’t gonna be the deciding factor in the championship hunt at that point because I felt like I was better than those guys and was gonna get by them.

GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – “Now, if I was better than Kurt but not better than them and put myself in the middle, that was gonna be in a tough spot for me to be in and I’m glad that the five points at the beginning of the race – I didn’t really let Kurt drive off. I drove down in that corner going all I could go and my car had a little wiggle and I had to wait. When I went to the throttle, the caution was out and he was ahead of me. But that five points wouldn’t have made a difference in the championship, so I’m glad I wasn’t a factor in any way. I lost a lot of friends in that Hendrick plane crash, a good friend of mine – Randy Dorton. I wanted Hendrick to win this championship and I wanted Kurt to win the championship. I feel for the Hendrick family and Rick and everything that those guys are going through and I like Jimmie and I like Jeff, but I knew only one guy could win today. I was hoping that none of the competitors or myself were a factor in that outcome and, thank goodness, we weren’t. The race ended uneventful like it should have, I guess.” WERE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT RUNNING OUT OF GAS ON THE G-W-CH? “No, not at all because we had stopped with 47 to go, so we stopped a lot later than all those guys up front. With 34 to go, I was starting like 24th. I mean, I was deep in the field. I almost had to pass a car a lap to get to the front and that’s hard to do in that short a time, plus lapped cars. I was starting 24th, plus all the lapped cars, so I’ve got to pass a whole lot of cars in a short amount of time. I needed those two cautions. I don’t remember what those other ones were, obviously the 12 car right in front of me, but I needed those to be able to get a chance.” DID YOU FEEL YOU WERE HELPING KURT UP FRONT? “Actually, I didn’t look at it that way. If I wouldn’t have won and the 48 would have won, he would have won the championship? Is that correct on the math? So if the 48 won the race and I finished second? That wasn’t any of my concern at that point. I was trying to win and I felt like I could win with two to go, whether the 20 ran out of gas or not.” THOUGHTS ON JACK WINNING THE RACE AND TITLE? “I can promise you that today might be the greatest day of his life, but he could have had a lot better day today because he could have won all three championships this season. He could have won all three. I feel like we didn’t put forth enough effort to win them all, but he could have went from three years ago never winning a NASCAR championship to winning all of them this year – all three of them – and had them won, if it weren’t for some of the issues that we had along the season that I feel were preventable. I feel for him, but today is an exciting day for him that we won the race and they won their back-to-back championships, but, keeping in mind that he had an opportunity to win all three of them real close.” TALK ABOUT PERSEVERANCE? “Yeah, when our program was looking dismal, I went to Jack and told him I was unhappy and was not happy driving the 16 car. I felt like we weren’t really given the opportunity to be as competitive as we needed to be and he helped us get that program turned around some. But the reason I’m still there is because he knows what happened today is what I’m capable of as a driver and what Doug is capable of as crew chief. So we just need to have these kind of race cars everywhere we go next year – Charlotte, Richmond – and we need to win six or seven races and be in the chase and be a contender for the title. That’s what we’re capable of.” COMMENT ON KURT WINNING. “I think Kurt’s gonna be a good champion. He’s a great race car driver. He’s proven that this season. If we would have done the math this way two or three years ago, I think he would have won the championship as well, so I think he’s proved his spot in the sport. I think he’ll be good for the sport being the spokesperson for them. I want to win a Nextel Cup championship, but I don’t know if I can deal with all the media and all the stuff. Being on the Today Show and all the things he’s got to do. That’s a lot of work. He might be a little nervous about doing all that, but that five million dollars will probably keep him headed in the right direction.”

GREG BIFFLE CONTINUED – DID YOU GET THE SENSE IT WAS A CRAZY DAY? “Not really because we’re kind of in our own race and we’re not aware of so much of the surroundings because we’re always strategizing inside the car. But when they were driving around with the flatbed looking at every light to figure out where the lens came from and we’re discussing fuel mileage. We’re eight laps short of making the race and I’m like, ‘Eight laps or eight caution laps’ because that makes a difference. They said, ‘Eight caution laps.’ I said, ‘We’re gonna have eight caution laps. They’re looking for a light bulb right now or a lens that could be on the race track somewhere.’ It’s a long ways to go. There are 60 laps to go, there’s gonna be another caution. You know something is gonna happen, but we couldn’t stop then. All we could hope for was to keep going and us get a break, which we did with about 47 to go and got fresh tires on it, full of fuel, no questions asked. Now the work is up to us, but I didn’t really know about all the things going on. I knew Kurt had lost a right-front wheel broke or something. My spotter said, ‘Kurt’s up in the wall in two and he’s headed down pit road and no caution.’ I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s out of it.’ Then I come around two and I don’t see a mark anywhere, so I’m not sure what happened. And then later on they said that the center of the wheel broke, which is very unusual.” CAN YOU TALK ABOUT SOME OF THE SAVES KURT HAS MADE? “I tell you what, I have been lucky like that as well and I’ve been unlucky, but a good race car driver has car control and that meaning whether the car is going forward, backward or sideway. I spun out here coming off turn four – spun out three-quarters of the way around the corner and slid all the way down the frontstretch – popped four tires – and was able to come back in in a Busch car in practice and nothing happened. I mean, you’ve got to be lucky, you’ve got to have some car control whether the thing is going forward or backwards, so all kind of things can happen.”

KURT BUSCH PRESS CONFERENCE – YOUR THOUGHTS. “Just an unbelievable day – to be able to persevere such as we did again – to overcome all the different obstacles – to put together a great season such as we did. With the regular season, superb job, and then with the playoffs, outstanding. One little slip here or there, we were able to make up for it. We started off the chase with a win and we finished with a top five and a pole. It’s just unbelievable the way that Jimmy Fennig executed the whole program to give me the best race cars that I could possible drive and to give me equipment that would give me the position like we had today. A top five finish, I was in stitches. I was just sick to my stomach the last few laps. I had been out there forever. I haven’t had fresh water in a while. This is in parallel to the Super Bowl or to the World Series to snag this first championship that NASCAR put together with this new format and to be the first Nextel Cup champion, it took so much from within. It’s like any other championship in the world. I felt like I had the whole world on my shoulders every lap today, but, yet, I felt like I was alone or I had my whole team behind me and I had the fan support and I knew that I had the equipment to do so. So many emotions today and to be able to pull through and finish like we did – to cap off a great season – it’s an unbelievable feeling.”

JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – THOUGHTS? “It’s just been great to be part of Jimmy Fennig’s program. Jimmy organized this 97 team in his own light. It comes from all the good history that he had with Bobby Allison and Jimmy Fennig has only worked for two NASCAR team owners. It turns out Bobby Allison and myself and, of course, he spent so much time with Bobby and Bobby’s been an inspiration to me as well. But, anyway, to be here with Jimmy and in the doldrums when we were just getting Kurt started and brought Jimmy into the program and had Jimmy take him as a son or as a driver that was incredibly talented, that was what he considered to be worth his energy and his commitment to hang in and bring us all along has been incredible.

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – “He’s built the team and he’s helped Kurt advance. I’ve had many questions. Kurt has had some lumps and bumps in his young career here. Kurt is an incredible quick study. Once he understands how something works, he never forgets it and he won’t put it aside. If something happens that’s not right for him or not good for him, then he makes the commitment to go forward and do it differently. If somebody had asked me what the thing is that’s made the most difference as seen by me for Kurt this year is how close he’s been to Mark and how close he’s been to Matt and how close he’s been to Greg Biffle and to watch him start to mentor, as he has, Carl Edwards who has come along behind on the same path that Kurt came through just a couple years ago.”

KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – TALK ABOUT THE SAVES YOU HAD TODAY. “It’s just a scenario to where I’ve seen things go wrong and tried to understand the best that I can and what I need to do as a driver to communicate to the team to be able to persevere and stay focused on the task at hand. Things are always magnified when you’re in this position of driving for a championship. There are other teams that have bumps in the road as well and to be able to put forth an effort such as this in 10 races, I had one smooth race, I believe and that was New Hampshire – and maybe Martinsville a little bit, where we finished fifth. But to go to each of the race tracks and to attack the race track for a win and nothing less. One race track after the next. Five hundred miles one week, 400 the next. Go to a rough and tough race track like Martinsville, follow it up – the week preceding was a Talladega Superspeedway event. A driver has to adapt to so many changing circumstances at the race track. Every single one is different, even your competitors because you see different competitors at every race track who excel at one specific style of race track versus another. The final 10 races, the race tracks challenged every team to the testing ability, to the team’s focus, to the motor tuning and development – you name it. It was a full team effort and the way that we were able to overcome all of those circumstances – there is positions in time to be lucky – there is positions in time to be able to make sure that you stay focused and put those thoughts at bay and put together the best effort. I’m overwhelmed. I’m completely exhausted about what these final 10 races meant, but it’s a true testament to what a team has to do, to what a driver has to do, to what an owner sees as a leader and the way that you have to compete at your top level for 10 races against the 10 toughest competitors – that’s what this season meant for us was these final 10 races because that’s what the Nextel Chase for the Cup is now.” TALK ABOUT YOUR RIDE TO GET HERE. “One might argue that it hasn’t been a long road. I’ve been very fortunate to slide into different rides. That was racer’s call them and to be able to meet the right people and sponsors and car owners and crew chiefs, and to be able to do this in such a short timeframe, it’s mind-boggling to me. I’ve had so many things fall into place in my life that I’m very fortunate for. To be able to work for such a caliber team at such a young age was overwhelming to me and all I knew at that level was to go to the front, race as hard as I can and wrinkle fenders along the way. That’s how I thought I was supposed to race and that was the wrong mindset. When I raced with Jimmy Fennig my second year, he gave me great cars that would lead races and run up front. Now I’m an unpolished second-year driver that has equipment – look out, and I ran over people again. So it took some time for me to understand the bigger picture and to know that there was no real level higher than this and there never will be in my life. I’m fully committed to NASCAR and the Nextel Cup racing circuit and just to be able to understand the bigger ethic and the bigger picture about racing at this level is one thing that I misunderstood the first couple of years and now I’ve been able to put that in grasp and to learn from Jimmy Fennig, to learn from Jack Roush, and, of course, my father was always there. He was the first one that I’d go to after a race when I got home and ask him questions about what I did wrong and what I can do better. He’s really helped me along to this point.”

KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – TALK ABOUT THE EMOTIONS WHEN YOU GRABBED THE TROPHY. “I had the 48 in front of me, the 24 in front of that and I’m doing all these numbers in my head trying not to run into walls and I thought I did it. It took all the way to the back straightaway for them to communicate to me that we had done it and immediately the emotions overtook anything that I did all day today. When I got to the point of hoisting the trophy – the first Nextel Cup – it meant so much to me, it meant so much to NASCAR and I know that it means a tremendous amount to Nextel to savor those few moments and to act as if I had won something that has never been done before and I did that today. Those were the few thoughts that went through my mind as I hoisted up the trophy.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED – TALK ABOUT WINNING UNDER BOTH SYSTEMS. “We’d been in the old system, competing in the old system, last year was our 17th year and, of course, we’ve been to the call four times with Mark he’s finished second. I was surprised that we were able to win last year. Our 2003 Taurus was dated. We hadn’t had a new set of templates for it since ’97, so we had a nose that was behind and tail that was behind and an engine that was revised the last time in ’92 and the Dodge and the Chevrolet have had numerous revisions since then, so I didn’t think our engine was great and I knew our car wasn’t great from an aero point of view. I was surprised that we were able to come up with the durability, the consistency that the 17 Dewalt team was able to do what they needed to do. I fully expected with the new engine program and with the new Ford this year to be a factor this year, since we kept most of our people in place and learned a lot through last year. I had hoped to be able to put all five in the top 10. I’m greedy that way and that certainly is our goal for next year, but if we come back and look at the chances we had to lose this championship in the last 10 – the times that Kurt got himself caught in a situation, where he had to spin the car to miss a wreck or he had a wheel fall off today. My heart stopped when I saw how close he was to pit wall and crashing that pit wall head on getting into the pits as the wheel came off. So there were many ways for us to lose this. We can’t expect to win two championships in a row with all the hazards that are out there, so this is a feast or famine business. It’s incredibly hard to do this and I’m just glad to have a chance to have won it twice with Kurt and with Matt and I look forward to repeats for Kurt or Matt and the other guys.” YOU’RE THE LAST NAME ON THE WINSTON CUP AND FIRST ON THE NEXTEL CUP. “How about that.”

KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE WHEEL AND SUBSEQUENT PIT STOPS? “We had a problem that in the car it felt as if we had a loose lugnut and when you have that type of problem it’s hard to distinguish what exactly is wrong. Is it the wheel spacer the got caught up in the wheel wrong? Is it that there is something loose? You don’t want to take and point your finger at somebody that did the wrong job. You have to analyze it the best way that you can and after the pit stop I still thought that the wheel vibrated loose and we had a flat tire due to a blister, not knowing that the center of the wheel came out. So I pointed at the front tire changer during that pit stop and he was like, ‘What are you talking about? Do you need something?’ And I’m like, ‘No, this is a moment in my life and your life that we’re not agreeing on.’ (Laughter) And we were able to get back out on the track and to not have a vibration after that. That was the first time I’ve ever had a wheel that came apart. The center of it was tight against the hub, the wheel came apart from the outer ring. That’s something Jimmy Fennig explained to me. We were able to learn something new today as well as finish well enough to win the first Nextel Cup championship. Just the way that our season has gone. There are so many lessons that you learn and you have to apply them quickly if you want to be competitive at this top level.”

JIMMY FENNIG, Crew Chief – CAN YOU ADDRESS THE TIRE? “The tire, it broke and the first reaction you do is you go to the tire changer and see if the holes were oblong. We brought the piece up on the pit box and looked at it and they weren’t oblong. So then we’re sitting there, are the wheel spacers backing off? We’re trying to fix the problem or find the problem, but the wheel was actually tight. I was just by the car right now and everything was still tight after the race, so we’ll take it back to the shop on Monday and look at it and see if we can find, maybe we had some bad wheel spacers or the metal was too soft or something like that that caused it. But the tire changer did have them pulled up tight. Why it broke, there’s a torque ring that picks up the outside and inner part of the wheel and it just picked up the inner part and not the outer part, so we’ll dig into it tomorrow morning and find out.” HAS THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU? “With Mark Martin in ’98 we had a wheel come loose, so I set a rule that the wheels get torqued when it leaves the garage and once it’s on pit road before the race starts, so they’re actually torqued twice. Since 1998 was the last time that happened – that was the very first time, but this time it appears the wheel wasn’t loose, something else was the problem.”

“To put that in perspective, that’s a fatigue failure that you typically see on parts that have been used too long. We replace, for the Cup Series, our wheels every year and times when the truck wasn’t as intense as it is today and Busch isn’t as intense as it is today, you would expect wheels to be used two years in Busch and maybe a third year in Truck or ARCA, but that’s the kind of a failure you typically see. We’ve got to go back and learn from this. Jimmy and I will put our heads together on it and look at some more parts, but, right now my shot from the hip is next year we’ll run our wheels for 26 races and then for the last 10 we’ll have another set of wheels. But in my 18 years, I’ve never had a wheel break that I felt broke because it was fatigued like this, but I’ve seen them on wheels that I knew were too old for what they were trying to do.”

KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – WHAT DID YOUR HEART DO WHEN THE WHEEL FELL OFF AND JUST MISSED PIT WALL? “This is a good opportunity to throw Matt (Kenseth) under the bus. His nickname is Gravedigger after he ran into those tires and that was the last thing that I wanted to do (laughter). Matt is a guy that he’s always a racer, he’s always trying to do the best job that he can in the seat and that’s somebody that I’ve looked up to. Even though he’s only got a year’s more experience, he was one that helped me in what we put together as a team. To have that feeling of knowing that the light at the end of the tunnel was very dim at that point and then to almost run into the tire barrier thinking about the light being too dim, I realized I was in the wrong frame of mind. The car wouldn’t turn. I just had too much speed and when I applied the brake the car turned to the right even further. Because of the way that the caliper locked up so quickly, it turned the car to the right. I let go of the brake and turned the thing as hard as I could left and I missed it, and in doing all that, I came into pit road too hot. So my speed on entry was too fast and that penalty was to start at the tail-end of the longest line and that was that.” HOW DID YOU RE-FOCUS AFTER THE TIRE? “Knowing early on that you have time to make up and be able to pull up through the field, you’re able to smile still and know that you’ve got a shot because you can still work as hard as you can and pull your heart out because tomorrow is gonna be another day and you hope that you gave everything that you gave today. For us, to have those problems early it was good. To have smaller problems later, it was still chewing at me, but I knew if I could find the 24 and the 48 that we would have an opportunity to race those guys for this championship. Things at the end of the race came into play for us in a positive way.” WHAT’S THE MOST SIGNIFICANT THING TO BEING CALLED SERIES CHAMP? “This one has its first. This is a tag that Nextel came into our sport to create a new identity around NASCAR racing, to create a playoff system to where you have to be a driver and a team to persevere over anything that happens in a 10-race playoff. If one or two bad things happen and your finish isn’t that great, it somewhat takes your chances away, but if you’re able to go for the win in every race and beat the best of the best – 10 guys for 10 races – and to be put up with the likeliness of other names that have come up through our sport as champions, it means so much to me and to give Jack his first Nextel Cup championship, to win the first one for Nextel. I know there’s gonna be so much work ahead of me that will create a stronger identity for the 97 team and what Jimmy Fennig has put together. I look at it as a team effort, but in the history book it’s my name. I know Jimmy looks at that. I know that Jack looks at that and I look at the others that have come through our ranks – to be a champion and to put together races and to put together an effort, it was all different in the past. This was the first one in the new era of Nextel as our series sponsor. To win this championship, it’s unparalleled to anything that’s ever happened in motorsports because of what it took as far as an approach to win this.”

KURT BUSCH CONTINUED – CAN YOU ADDRESS THE MATURITY IT TOOK TO RE-FOCUS AFTER THE WHEEL FELL OFF? “I believe at that point in the race it was time to either shape up or ship out, and I wanted the team to rally behind everyone of themselves and to know that we had no more room for mistakes. And to have that circumstance of the wheel falling off, something that I’ve never had before, to have the miscommunication on what we were going to do as far as our pit stop, it was so early enough in the race, even if we have that towards the latter part of the race and didn’t have the outcome that we would’ve had, it’s a team effort. We got to this point because we’re a team, and we were going to win this thing or lose this thing because we were a team. There wasn’t going to be any finger pointing. I would take all responsibility because the media would’ve been on my shoulders afterwards. It is a great thing that our team pulled together today, and what I learned from these individuals sitting to my right that I’ve been able to piece things together to know what it takes to be a champion.”

JIMMY FENNIG CONTINUED – IS IT TRUE THAT KURT COMPLETELY MAINTAIN HIS COMPOSURE? “Yeah. Kurt has been doing an awesome job on these last 10 races. We ended up spinning out a couple, he kept his cool, come back and we got a nice top-five finish. He just calmed down, everything’s been cool. We have a long way to go, and at the end the results show it. So, he’s been doing an awesome job at that. I think I probably get a little bit madder on the box – you can ask Jack about last week at Darlington. It’s a big team effort. One guy makes a mistake, we go help that guy, and we all stand behind, nobody points fingers like Kurt says.”

ONLY DRIVERS GET ASKED ABOUT PRESSURE. GIVEN EVERYTHING THAT WAS AT STAKE TODAY, DID YOU FEEL ANY ADDITIONAL PRESSURE FOR YOU AND THE CREW? “I kind of had meetings every Sunday with the crew guys and the pit-crew guys, and we go over what needs to be done, and we kind of just say do like we’ve been doing to get us to this point. I kind of joke around a little bit, keep ’em relaxed, but there is pressure on them guys.