Crew chief's rebuke lights a fire for Kurt Busch

Kurt Busch scored his best finish since winning the Daytona 500 and it was the result of his crew chief pushing the right buttons.

Those buttons were Busch's. Tony Gibson chided his driver after he qualified 15th at Kansas Speedway and Busch said used it as motivation during the Hollywood Casino 400.

"Tony Gibson deserves this second-place finish. He got on me pretty hard Saturday morning after qualifying. He said, 'You know, we got a brake problem,'" Busch revealed. "I said, ''What do you mean?' He goes, 'You didn't use the brake, that's why we didn't run good in [Turns] 2 and 3.'

"I'm like, 'Man, I never use brake in qualifying.' So, he actually really pissed me off. I spent the whole race pretty agitated. At the end, I made sure I used brake and brought it home in second."

Although he lined up second on the race's final restart with 25 laps to go, Busch had nothing for winner Martin Truex Jr. The No. 41 was over two seconds behind at the checkered flag. However, it was a day Busch and his team needed after being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. While the finish was Busch's 14th top 10, it was only his sixth top-5 finish of the year. And since his big win at Daytona in February, just once had Busch finished better than fourth – a third at Darlington seven races ago.

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Not that Sunday was easy. Busch fell off the lead lap before the race was 20 circuits old when he had to pit for a tire rub after brushing the wall. Receiving the free pass on Lap 47, Busch then bounced in and around the top 20 until fresh tires at the end of the race put him in contention for a solid finish.

"It was nice to have things unfold in our favor today, even though I brushed the wall and got us a lap down early. The mentality that I've been trying to accept right now is run for 10th, try not to push the car too hard. Anything above 10th is icing on the cake," said Busch. "You just go where you can. I've been trying to drive it too hard.

"There's guys like a seven-time champion [Jimmie Johnson] who spun in front of me today just because of he insecurity that these cars have when they're side-by-side, the way that they're affected by the air. I know for us, we're not on the positive side of the grip level curve. We're right behind it.

"So, I just need to keep the car at that level. We'll try to build on [this]. It's a matter of just keeping track of the adjustments throughout the race, making sure that we use every set of sticker tires that we possibly can and get the most out of sticker tires. When we have scuffs, we struggle. We're a 15th-place car on scuffs."