Inaugural Chase winner Kurt Busch says ‘the time had come’ for championship format change

The game plan for Kurt Busch and Jimmy Fennig was simple: be the Trojan horse.

This was in early 2004, as the NASCAR Cup Series garage began a new era of having a championship postseason. It was called the Chase and comprised the final 10 races of the season. Busch and Fennig would compete for the championship on the No. 97 team for Jack Roush.

By now, the highlights of what happened in the final race of the Chase have been well-played. Busch is coming to pit road when the right front tire comes off his Ford and rolls back across the racetrack. It brought out the caution flag and kept Busch in contention.

Busch won the championship, which was his first and only in the Cup Series. In the process, he put a page in the NASCAR history book as the first winner of the Chase.

“Jimmy Fennig was my crew chief at the time at Roush, and we came up with a game plan on the announcement, we’ll call in Jan. 1, that we were going to save all our test sessions,” Busch recalled Friday in his native Las Vegas, where he was one of the guest speakers at a media luncheon. “Back then, you could save them for whenever you wanted to use them, and we saved them all for the playoffs. We pushed hard, and we were like the Trojan horse approach of we’re going to just sneak up on these guys, and we’re going to conquer the playoffs.

“Over the years, Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus obviously perfected it better than others.”

Johnson won five straight championships in the Chase format from 2006 through 2010. He added a sixth in 2013. A year later, NASCAR introduced the playoffs, which had eliminations and a winner-take-all finale.

Busch followed up his championship with four other finishes inside the top 10 in the points during the Chase era, but he never came close to claiming a championship again.

“It’s having that game plan of playoff atmosphere, playoff attitude, and what it takes to conquer those 10 weeks later on this year,” he said. “It’s little nuggets here and little things there. It’s a Goodyear tire test that somebody did at Phoenix in February that led to this March race. That same tire will be used in October.

“There are certain things you do for playoff races in the springtime knowing that you’re going to go back to them in the fall.”

NASCAR has reverted to the Chase this season. It will still comprise the final 10 races of the season, but will now feature the top 16 drivers in the points. Busch had nine other drivers he had to compete against for his championship.

“I believe that the time had come for the change,” said Busch. “Yeah, you want that Game 7 moment, you want that fourth quarter buzzer beater. With motorsports, it’s tough to really put all that into one envelope. So, I agree with NASCAR’s decision to go to a 10-race run, which still creates that playoff atmosphere.

“You have the regular season, and then you have to stay consistent. Like all the drivers are talking about, [Tyler] Reddick could be on easy street with the win, but yet you keep pushing because you want to be that regular-season champion. But also, it’s off consistency. That’s what it’s going to be with the 11th- to 16th-place group on who makes it in. They have to push hard all summer long. So, it’s that and the playoff atmosphere.”