Bad luck costing Busch points in Chase race

Kurt Busch won the inaugural NASCAR Chase for the Nextel Cup with consistency.

In 2004, the Las Vegas native started the 10-race postseason with a victory at New Hampshire and went on to post eight more top-10 finishes as he held on to beat Jimmie Johnson by eight points for the title.

His only slip-up down the stretch came at Atlanta in the seventh race of the Chase, with an engine failure relegating the then-Roush Racing driver to a 42nd-place finish.

Busch, who now drives for Penske Racing, has been one of the hottest drivers in the Cup series since July, when Pat Tryson became his crew chief.

Busch began this year's Chase as one of the favorites, but a pedestrian 25th-place finish at New Hampshire and a 29th-place run Sunday at Dover have left him 11th among the 12 title contenders entering this week's race at Kansas Speedway.

Worse, Busch's slow start in the Chase has been almost entirely due to bad luck.

At New Hampshire, his Dodge lost a cylinder and he struggled with carburetor problems, resulting in the worst finish of all the Chase drivers.

Sunday at Dover, Busch was running fourth with 14 laps left when a flat tire sent him hard into the wall. Had he gone on to finish fourth, he would be eighth, 67 points behind leader Jeff Gordon. Instead, he trails Gordon by 151 points.

"A broken 50-cent part got us at New Hampshire, and the tire cost us at Dover," Busch said. "What's so frustrating is that at worst we had top-five cars in both races."