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Post by 221dayton on Aug 24, 2014 9:24:53 GMT -5
#18-Kyle Busch came into the weekend with hopes of adding to his 16 career Bristol win total and perhaps sweeping the three-race weekend. But he left Saturday night with serious questions about the cohesiveness of the #18 Sprint Cup team. Busch was involved in an early accident and also endured a pit road speeding penalty to erase any hopes of winning the main event.
But things went from bad to worse for Busch, who angrily left his car on pit road when he exited the race with a handful of laps remaining despite crew chief Dave Rogers instructing him to do otherwise.
"Park it behind the truck and take your whiny little ass to the bus," Rogers said over the team radio.
Busch's frustration is understandable given the circumstances that came his way, but the behavior should raise more than a few concerns about the team's ability to compete for a title. Simply said, Busch and Rogers need to find a way to harness the emotional outbursts before they can be seriously considered championship material.
Jayski
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Post by Schmoopy1000 on Aug 24, 2014 15:28:12 GMT -5
good for Rogers.
About time someone on that team put Busch in place.
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Post by chuck on Aug 24, 2014 15:41:54 GMT -5
Kyle is a prima donna but he is also 50% of Toyota's wins in 2014. Hamlin is the other 50%.
Toyota is not having a good year and that probably makes him cry even more.
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Post by 221dayton on Aug 25, 2014 8:20:45 GMT -5
Will Kyle Busch-Dave Rogers spat impact JGR crew-chief moves for 2015?
Sporting News 8/24/2014
Tuesday's competition meeting at Joe Gibbs Racing could be quite interesting. Kyle Busch could go in there and joke with crew chief Dave Rogers, saying, "Where should my whiny little ass go today?" Or Busch could go in there and be miffed, saying, "Why did we change our pit-road speed monitoring system?"
There is a danger in reading too much into the Busch-Rogers exchange that occurred Saturday night during Sprint Cup's Bristol race. It came after a long evening in which Busch had a great car, got caught speeding and then collected in a crash thanks to be near the rear of the field. "I need a whole new right front suspension, a whole new right front suspension,'' Busch reportedly said as he raced several laps down. "I will be behind the wall in about two (expletive) laps."
Rogers later responded: "Park it behind the truck and take your whiny little ass to the bus.'' Part of the frustration apparently came from the fact that so many people were talking on the radio and that, coupled with the loudness of Bristol, resulted in miscommunication, with Busch not knowing that his team had not heard everything he said. Couple that with the team having had feast-or-famine results with three second-place finishes and four races of finishing 28th or worse in the past seven, and it's easy to see why the drivers and his support team are frustrated in a one-win season. Rogers has been stern with Busch at times, something Busch needs when he's venting over the radio. Busch's rants have become fewer through the years, but Rogers refuses to be a whipping post in this relationship. That attitude breeds respect of Rogers from his crew, and also reminds Busch that stockcar racing is a team sport. Busch can respect that. The key is whether Busch has confidence in Rogers.
Remember, Steve Addington was out as Busch's crew chief despite their having won 12 races in less than two years but missing the Chase in 2009. In the five years since, Busch has 13 wins with Rogers and made the Chase four times (counting this year). Rogers is a solid crew chief, and he's been through it all at JGR. His first Cup crew chief job was with Jason Leffler, a pairing that resulted in neither driver nor crew chief making it through the season on the team. Rogers moved to JGR's Nationwide program, won races and earned the Cup job with Busch, where he has thrived. The big question for Busch-Rogers: Where does their combo fit in the jigsaw puzzle that is the JGR 2015 crew chief lineup? JGR is adding a fourth Cup team for Carl Edwards and has yet to announce a contract extension with Darian Grubb, a Cup-winning chief who has not seemed in sync with Denny Hamlin the past two years. Hamlin, though, rarely seems to be in sync with any crew chief. He had it for a while with Mike Ford during the 2010 season when they made a championship run, and he had it with Grubb in 2012. With Grubb suspended over an unsealed firewall at Indianapolis, Hamlin has been quick to credit interim crew chief Mike Wheeler. That could be a way to build confidence in his team, or it could be a sign that Hamlin is endorsing Wheeler for the job. JGR also has another solid Cup crew chief in the making with Adam Stevens, who guides the No. 54 Nationwide car. Busch, when asked Tuesday about Stevens possibly being the crew chief for Edwards, gave him a solid endorsement. So JGR has decisions to make. Is it time for a change and pair Stevens with Busch, moving Rogers to Edwards? Does it move Grubb to Edwards and elevate Wheeler? Does it dare split what appears to be a successful pairing of Matt Kenseth and Jason Ratcliff to put Ratcliff with Busch, a pairing that would work based on their success in the Nationwide Series? A little heated back-and-forth on the radio can be a sign of competitiveness. Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson can bicker with the best of them, and they are considered the best combination in the business. The key is if they have full confidence in each other. JGR brass must believe that Busch and Rogers have that connection. With all the crew chief choices they have to make for 2015, the offseason could be the best time to make the change if there's any doubt the confidence doesn't exist.
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Post by VAisforRacers on Aug 25, 2014 14:20:19 GMT -5
good for Rogers. About time someone on that team put Busch in place. I agree it is good that Dave stood up to Kyle's stardom. But seriously doubt the owner will back the CC over the star driver. Shame but kind of true.
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Post by Gant fan on Sept 1, 2014 10:44:08 GMT -5
Last night he ran into the back of Truex JR and they played bumper cars for a lap. Liked how Truex didn't back down.
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tac10
Full Member
Posts: 225
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Post by tac10 on Sept 1, 2014 13:32:52 GMT -5
He also managed to ruin Tony Stewart's day.
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Post by 221dayton on Sept 12, 2014 8:59:38 GMT -5
Kyle Busch says 'things are fine'
Jared Turner FOX Sports SEP 11, 2014
By all accounts, the past few weeks have been challenging for Kyle Busch -- and that's putting it extremely mildly.
After finishing second in the Brickyard 400 on July 27, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver failed to record a single top-10 finish over the final six races of the Sprint Cup Series regular season.
In four of those races, Busch finished outside the top 35, and it was after the last of those results -- a 36th-place finish at Bristol in August -- that frustrations finally boiled over for the driver and his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing team.
After Busch radioed to crew chief Dave Rogers late at Bristol that his ill-handling car needed a whole new right-front suspension, Rogers promptly responded by telling his driver to "park it behind the truck and take your whiny little ass to the bus.''
Cooler heads have since prevailed, and Busch indicated during Thursday's Chase Media Day activities in Chicago that there is harmony between the two heading into the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup.
"Things are fine. Things were fine at Atlanta, things were fine at Richmond," Busch said, referring to the two races that followed Bristol. "Everyone's at zero now. You want to be running better, you want to be winning those last two or three races before going into the Chase, but I don't know that anybody's ever really done that in a row, and then they go into the Chase and carry that momentum through. This is just sort of like going to Daytona. It's a fresh start to the year, and you just try to work it out."
Despite his struggles in the weeks leading up to the Chase, Busch and his team have shown flashes of championship potential this season. That was demonstrated most clearly in March at Fontana, where Busch scored his first and only win of the season to date, and with it solidified a berth in the Chase.
Busch called the last several weeks "devastating."
"You hate that it happens," the Las Vegas native said. "It's pretty stupid sometimes, but there were a bunch of mistakes made there within that stretch. I could go on and on all day, but the fact of the matter is we've just got to make sure we limit those mistakes here in the next 10 weeks. ... We know what we've got to do. There's not necessarily a plan of attack, but there's an idea of what we need to accomplish."
Busch will drive a new car this weekend at Chicagoland -- a track where he opened last year's Chase with a runner-up finish -- and says Joe Gibbs Racing is taking steps to elevate its game down the homestretch.
"We know our level isn't high enough," said Busch, who is seeded eighth out of the 16 championship-eligible drivers. "We know there's room to grow because of what we're getting beat by every single week. The 2 (Brad Keselowski), the 4 (Kevin Harvick) and the 24 (Jeff Gordon) -- they're your favorites, right, so how much more can they pick up? I don't know.
"They might have been running at 100 percent already. If we can just go to their level and compete with them, the driver may prevail a little bit more and you can see some guys doing some good things behind the steering wheel and getting the job done there."
Busch would like to think that perhaps he's gotten most of his bad luck behind him before the Chase -- when there is little room for mistakes.
"I've been texting back and forth with a bunch of my sponsors and stuff like that, and it's kind of funny -- that's what they've been saying: 'Just get it all out of the way now, it's all good, we're in,'" Busch said. "We're hoping that that's right and that's true, but anything can happen. We can still continue on down that road, but we hope hot. ... Essentially, everybody's at zero, so you just start from there."
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Post by VAisforRacers on Sept 13, 2014 11:18:19 GMT -5
I guess it has to be something in how the Busch boys were raised that makes them appear kind of crazy. Either that or they are both kind of crazy.
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