June 1, 2010
By Allen Madding
Charlotte Motor Speedway was once known as Jimmie Johnson’s house. It all seemed like a cozy fit. Johnson’s primary sponsor, Lowe’s Home Improvement purchased the naming rights to the track and Johnson quickly hung his name on Victory Lane.
At the end of the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, Lowe's notified Charlotte Motor Speedway and Speedway Motorsports Inc. track owners that it would not be renewing the naming rights on the track. Little did Johnson and Hendrick Motorsports know that their stay in the master suite was about to come to an end as well.
When the Sprint Cup Series came rolling into Charlotte Motor Speedway for the first of two weeks of competition and all of the festivities that Speed Street in downtown Charlotte entails, Kurt Busch and the Penske Racing team had their sights set on the plush accommodations of Victory Lane and its present tenant.
Busch displaced Johnson at the All-Star race at Charlotte last weekend with a car his Penske team created, that was so tough that it not only bounced off the yellow walls of Charlotte Motor Speedway once, but twice before making a bee-line straight for Victory Lane and a supersized paycheck of one million dollars.
In the pre-race gala that kicks off the traditional Memorial Day celebration at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the question was put to Kurt Busch by the Fox Sports crew –- could the momentum of winning the All-Star event the weekend before -- carry over into the Coca-Cola 600. Busch’s response in the interview was that it most definitely could. The team was pumped up to win in its own backyard, and they had brought the same chassis setup. Roger Penske had also brought the same armored truck to carry home the race winnings.
Penske teams had been busy all day Sunday trying to secure a win at the Indianapolis 500, but lost to rival Chip Ganassi. When the green flag flew in the air at Charlotte, the Penske teams worked feverously to get their cars up front and watched an assault being waged by the Earnhardt-Ganassi team of Jamie McMurray and the No. 1 Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Boats Chevrolet.
But the piece that the Penske team had brought to the fight, proved too much for even the hard charging McMurray to hold off in the closing laps. After leading 29 laps in the last 100 laps of the race, many thought McMurray was riding off into the night. But a late race caution gave Kurt Busch and company time to regroup and retake the lead -- setting the fastest laps run of the event.
Busch led 252 of the 400 laps in the 600-mile event dominating the two consecutive events at Charlotte Motor Speedway and effectively evicting Jimmie Johnson of his seemingly permanent residency in Victory Lane at the 1.5-mile Charlotte track -- giving him and the Penske Racing team the bragging rights among all of the teams that make their home in Mooresville, North Carolina.
The elder Busch and the Penske team have been on a roll in the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. In the first 13 events of the season, Busch has not finished outside of the top twenty. He has won twice in points paying events in the Miller Lite No. 2 Dodge, recorded one pole, five top five, seven top ten finishes. In fact Kurt Busch currently holds an average starting position of 9.6 and an average finish of 13.8 with no DNFs. At this point in the schedule last season, Busch had three finishes outside of the top 20 and no wins.
Not only does Jimmie Johnson and the team at Hendrick Motorsports need to be concerned about being kicked out of Victory Lane at Charlotte Motor Speedway the last two weekends by Kurt Busch and the Penske Racing team. They need to be concerned that Kurt Busch and Penske may have their sights set on dethroning him for the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Championship.
The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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