Childress wants to work with driver Kurt Busch
WELCOME, N.C. Kurt Busch not only has a new ride, he has a new ally.
By joining Furniture Row Racing next season, Busch also will have closer ties to car owner Richard Childress, whose team has a technical alliance with Furniture Row Racing.
And Childress wants to have a closer relationship with the 2004 Sprint Cup champ, whose career has featured a string of victories along with emotional outbursts, including one this year with a reporter that led NASCAR to suspend Busch for one race.
“Kurt knows that he’s had some challenges, and I’ve talked to him several times,” Childress said Tuesday. “He’s working really hard as a person through some of those, and I know I can work with him and make it work. Now that he’s with Furniture Row, I’m going to try to work with him.
“If I see him saying something wrong, I’ll be the first one to go talk to him. He respects that.
“We’ve talked. He’s got a plan. He’s working hard to put a lot of that stuff behind him. . . . Dale Earnhardt was one that you had to work with, and Kevin (Harvick) and a lot of these guys. Anybody that wants to win, they’re going to let it get away from them, and sometimes they let it go too far and you’ve just got to be able to pull them back.”
Busch has 24 wins in 427 races and had at least one win in 10 consecutive seasons until this year, his first with one-car operation Phoenix Racing.