By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
Despite running at the front of the field through the majority of the race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Kurt Busch had to settle with an eighth-place finish.
However, things went downhill under green-flag pit stops with 74 laps remaining in the Foxwoods Resort Casino 301. Busch hit pit road from the second.
As the veteran driver was about to hit his marks in his pit stall on what would be the penultimate stop, he stopped one stall away. Busch was told by Billy Scott, crew chief, to stop because Ford Performance teammate, Ryan Blaney, was about to exit his pit. Busch was stopped for only a couple of seconds but came out of pit road in the fifth position.
“That’s just bad luck or bad communication between two crew chiefs. And then the crew chief is like, ‘he’ll be gone by the time you get there.’ And I initially thought that and then they were still hanging left-side tires and I was like, ‘Oh no, oh no. He’s gonna be there.’ If I would have come around him, I would have blocked him huge,” Busch said.
“I would have been at a bad angle and that was just one of those we’re two guys walking down the hallway and we bumped into each other and had to hold each other up. That just kind of pushed us back too far on the final restart and I didn’t get a good last restart.”
Busch believes that things would have been different if they had come off pit road a couple of positions ahead.
Despite the pit road miscue and as the Playoffs approach, Busch believes that the team had a Playoff type of day.
“I think that might have been where Harvick might have been or the 78, but we were in the mix today. That’s what counts. We had a Playoff type of day today,” he said.
Busch led a race-high of 94 laps. He scored 45 points to move up two positions to fifth in the points standings.