Season Review: Kurt Busch

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2016 Race-by-Race Results | Video Recap

Kurt Busch went to Victory Lane once in 2016 and tied a career high with 21 top-10 finishes on route to finishing seventh in the final standings.   Busch started 2016 with 14 top-10 finishes in the first 16 events of the season, culminating in a win at Pocono Raceway in June – a race won without veteran crew chief Tony Gibson atop the pit box, who was serving a one-race suspension for a loose lug nut from the previous week at Charlotte.  With engineer Johnny Klausmeier leading the way, Busch was able to get a good jump on the final restart of the rain-delayed Axalta “We Paint Winners” 400 and then kept enough fuel in his tank to claim his first victory of the season, and lock himself into the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.    “It’s special anytime you win. For Tony Gibson to be out this week because of a lug nut issue, we had to overcome a lot,” Busch said following the win. “We’ve been so close all year. It’s just a matter of putting it all together, pit crew, engine. It’s just so much fun to drive and to be competitive and to be up front.”    Following the win, Busch would score back-to-back 10th-place finishes in the next two races at Michigan and Sonoma, but he then hit a summer slump that saw the No. 41 Chevrolet only finish in the top 10 three times in the final 10 races leading up to the start of the Chase.    Busch escaped the Round of 16 with a 13th-place finish at Chicagoland, followed by fifth at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and then 15th at Dover. He would fair much different in the Round of 12, however, notching top 10s …

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