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Kurt Busch continues pursuit of first Las Vegas Cup victory

He has won the NASCAR championship and the Daytona 500 and a lot of other major stock car races. But Kurt Busch is 0-for-18 at his hometown track.

He never has won at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Busch’s average starting position at LVMS is ninth. His average finishing position is 22.4.

His average frustration level after climbing out of his car in Las Vegas?

About 98 percent.

Maybe there were one or two that got away, he said ahead of Sunday’s running of the Pennzoil 400.

“I had an awesome car in 2002 — I think I was leading with 30 laps to go,” Busch said. “Then the alternator started to fail and we sputtered to the finish line. In 2005, I finished third, and the top two guys were (ruled) illegal after the race.”

Were that to happen Sunday, Busch would be declared the winner per new NASCAR rules designed to eliminate cheating in the garage area.

“Yeah, but you can’t cry over spilled milk,” he said with a sigh. “So we’ll just go there this year and try to win it. Legally.”

No carryover

Busch, the 2004 NASCAR champion, has 30 Cup Series wins, fifth among active drivers, and has won on other 1½-mile tracks. So it’s hard to pinpoint why he hasn’t done a victory burnout in his hometown.

“Just little mistakes here and there over the years,” he said. “In 2016, I had a really fast car, and we ended up settling for a 10th-place finish, I believe.”

It was actually ninth, after starting from the pole position.

“Each and every year, had good cars,” Busch said. “Just haven’t been able to put the full package together.”

Since finishing third at LVMS in 2005, the older of NASCAR’s racing Busch brothers has posted two top-10 finishes — ninth in 2011 and the aforementioned 2016 race. He has more 35th-place placings (three) than top 10s.

Busch had two chances to conquer LVMS in 2018 when the South Point 400 was added to the NASCAR schedule. After starting eighth, he finished 21st kicking off the playoffs.

Perhaps a new team and an old paint scheme will change his luck.

He’s No. 1

After a successful four-year run with the Stewart-Haas Racing team, Busch signed a one-year deal to replace Jamie McMurray in the No. 1 Chevrolet for Chip Ganassi Racing during NASCAR’s short offseason. After crashing early in the Daytona 500, he rallied with a strong third-place run in the second race of the season at Atlanta.

The car Busch will drive in the Pennzoil 400 will sport the Star Nursery colors —royal blue, yellow, orange and white — he ran in the old Southwest Tour when he was a teenager climbing the NASCAR ladder.

At 40, he remains at the top of his game. But it’s also an age at which retirement becomes a bigger speck in the rearview mirror. He’s starting to get asked about bucket lists and unfulfilled goals.

“It’s top five,” Busch says of winning in Las Vegas before moving on to whatever is next. “It’s been a tough one. Maybe I get too amped up and put too much pressure on myself in my hometown.

“Man, I’d love to win Vegas. I’d love to win Darlington and Indy and Watkins Glen — I haven’t won Watkins Glen up there in a Cup car, and I want to get the full circle on the road courses. The short tracks, I’ve won on all of them. The superspeedways …”

But not the 1.5-mile oval in his hometown.

On Sunday, he’ll try again.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.

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