NASCAR Cup

Kurt Busch quickest in Happy Hour

No one gets around Bristol Motor Speedway better than Kurt Busch. In ten starts, he has four wins and seven top -10 results. Busch looks on point to have another great weekend in Tennessee. He charted the quickest time during final practice for ...

Published: Mar 26, 2006, 6:40 PM

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No one gets around Bristol Motor Speedway better than Kurt Busch. In ten starts, he has four wins and seven top -10 results. Busch looks on point to have another great weekend in Tennessee. He charted the quickest time during final practice for NASCAR Nextel Cup series teams with a lap of 123.818 mph.

"I attribute my success at Bristol to my background on the short tracks - my roots of beginning my career on all those little tracks out West, like The Bullring at Vegas," said Busch. "I cut my teeth on that type of track, so I think it made for a shorter learning curve."

Jeff Gordon, whose no slouch at Bristol either, was second with a lap of 123.491 mph. Gordon has five career wins and four poles here.

"You've got to have a good race car," said Gordon of Bristol. "You've got to have a car that's capable of running the speeds that you need to run up front. That doesn't guarantee you're going to stay out of trouble. We've seen things happen anywhere in the field from being the leader in lap traffic to being in the middle or back of the pack as well. There's no place that's necessarily safe here. I will say that your chances are a whole lot better if you have a good race car."

Bobby Labonte, Dale Jarrett and Kyle Busch completed the top five fastest times.

"Patience is definitely the big thing which I haven't shown a lot of on this track in the past," described Kyle Busch. "You have to be content to ride around here for a lot of laps to put yourself in the right spot to be there at the end.

"The one thing that I was told before I ever came here was you have to check your temper at the gate and load up on as much patience as you can."

Snowflakes were falling but Cup cars still roared through 'Thunder Valley' getting in both practice sessions. A persistent rain on Friday cancelled all on track activities at Bristol Motor Speedway including Cup time trials which placed reigning champ Tony Stewart on the pole for the Food City 500 Sunday.

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