{"id":8542,"date":"2020-10-18T21:42:54","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T01:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=8542"},"modified":"2022-07-22T12:10:26","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T16:10:26","slug":"blown-engine-puts-kurt-busch-in-playoff-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2020\/10\/18\/blown-engine-puts-kurt-busch-in-playoff-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Blown engine puts Kurt Busch in playoff hole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Blowing an engine to start your run to a second championship is not ideal. That&#8217;s what happened to\u00a0<strong>Kurt Busch<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>On Lap 194 of Sunday&#8217;s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway, Kurt Busch radioed in that he was losing power. Entering Turn 1 on Lap 199, smoke poured out the tail pipe and brought out the caution.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hendrick Engines has been bullet-proof the last few years,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and it\u2019s a big surprise to all of us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There wasn&#8217;t an indication of what went wrong.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Maybe a valve,&#8221; he said, noting it was purely speculation, &#8220;and then, eventually, the valve broke. Once it broke, it then just started rattling around, and then locked up a rod.<\/p>\n<p>With the greater emphasis placed on engineering in the NASCAR Cup Series over the last decade, engines don&#8217;t blow up as much as they used to. As a result, some drivers go entire seasons between blown engines.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Quality control is very high,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The amount of attention to detail is at an all-time high. I haven&#8217;t seen an engine failure in years, and so whether it&#8217;s a Chevy or Ford or Toyota, everybody is spot on.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Prior to Sunday, the last time an engine blew for Busch was July 8, 2017, at Kentucky Speedway.<\/p>\n<p>He ended the day at Kansas City, Kansas, 38th, having led two laps.<\/p>\n<p>A ninth-place finish in the second stage prevented him from leaving with just a single point. With that said, however, he left with three.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, he leaves in a 65-point hole to\u00a0<strong>Chase Elliott<\/strong> in fourth. He&#8217;s essentially in a must-win situation to join\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/racing.ap.org\/article\/logano-wins-kansas-clinch-spot-cup-series-finale\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Joey Logano<\/strong> in the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway<\/a>\u00a0and win his second Cup Series championship.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TOP IMAGE: Chris Graythen\/Getty Images<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blowing an engine to start your run to a second championship is not ideal. That&#8217;s what happened to\u00a0Kurt Busch. On Lap 194 of Sunday&#8217;s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway, Kurt Busch radioed in that he was losing power. Entering Turn 1 on Lap 199, smoke poured out the tail pipe and brought out the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3353,"featured_media":8544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,1664],"tags":[259,260,353,14,1269,371],"class_list":["post-8542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nascar","category-nascar-cup-series","tag-hollywood-casino-400","tag-kansas-speedway","tag-kurt-busch","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-2020","tag-nascar-cup-series"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}