Busch caps whirlwind week with record-setting pole run

DARLINGTON, S.C. — Kurt Busch ended up on top at Darlington Raceway a week after finishing upside-down at Talladega.

Five days earlier, the Las Vegas native went airborne near the end of the Aaron’s 499 and crash-landed on Ryan Newman.

On Friday, Busch sped around Darlington with a fast lap of 181.918 mph for his third career pole here. It surpassed the two-year-old record of 181.254 mph that Kasey Kahne held.

“Last week we ended on our lid, and this week we’re here with a track record,” Busch said.

Defending Southern 500 champion Jimmie Johnson will start alongside Busch, followed by Busch’s younger brother, Kyle, Kahne and Martin Truex Jr.

It’s been quite a week for the elder Busch.

There was the frightening crash in the last Sprint Cup race and then an IndyCar test session for Michael Andretti at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Thursday. It’s also the 10-year anniversary of the thrilling, side-by-side duel with Ricky Craven in which Busch lost the race by .002 seconds — the closest finish in Sprint Cup since the series went to electronic timing in 1993.

“It’s been surreal,” Busch said. “It’s been an amazing ride.”

Busch was stoked about his IndyCar session, where he turned laps in excess of 220 mph. “It was a kid-in-a-candy-store moment,” he said.

Busch has had five previous top-10 finishes at Darlington, the last coming when he took third in 2010. He remembered his first pole here, set in 2001 when he became the youngest driver to start up front at the Southern 500. Busch was young and brash and did not listen to veteran comments about how difficult the track “Too Tough To Tame” could be.

These days, Busch acknowledged how lucky he was to win that pole 12 years ago, doing about everything wrong on the way to surpassing Jeff Gordon for the top spot. “Just because of my stupidity, I got it,” he said.

The former NASCAR champion is much smarter these days, although he has plenty of talented colleagues right behind. Johnson, the Sprint Cup points leader, has won three times at Darlington, and brother Kyle won this event in 2008. Also among the top 10 starters are past champions Denny Hamlin, Greg Biffle and seven-time winner Gordon.

Hamlin will start sixth and plans to run the entire race for the first time since suffering a compression fracture in a vertebra in his lower back March 24.

He turned 23 laps last week at Talladega before turning the car over to relief driver Brian Vickers, but he has no plans to have a driver on standby today.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt we’ll go the whole way,” said Hamlin, who tested himself by running 90 straight minutes during a long first practice Friday. “Nothing was uncomfortable, nothing hurt, nothing was sore. So I’m pretty confident I can make it the three, three-and-a-half (hours) that it’s going to take to run the race.”

Hamlin is determined to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship and sits 31st in the standings. But he’s only 76 points out of 20th place, where he’d need to be to be eligible for one of two wild-card berths.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was 16th fastest, while Danica Patrick had to go to a backup car after hitting the wall in practice and will start 40th.

Kyle Busch joked with Johnson after qualifying that the five-time series champion’s second-place finish meant the Busch brothers’ mother — drivers’ moms typically accompany them during prerace introductions — would have to walk across the stage twice instead with her boys on each arm.

“She’s happy I finished second,” Johnson jabbed with a smile.