KURT BUSCH – two thousand seventeen Fontana Race Advance

For Kurt Busch, driver of the No. Forty one Haas Automation/Monster Energy Ford Fusion for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), this weekend’s Auto Club four hundred Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race is one for bragging rights as he and the team converge on Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California looking to claim the victory in the backyard of both primary sponsors.

Headquartered is in Oxnard, California approximately one hundred miles from Fontana is Haas Automation, the largest CNC (computer numerically managed) machine implement builder in North America. Founded by Gene Haas in Sun Valley, California in one thousand nine hundred eighty three to manufacture machine contraptions, Haas Automation entered the industry with the very first fully automatic, programmable collet indexer – a device used to position parts for machining with high accuracy. Haas moved the company to its current purpose-built facility located on eighty six acres in Oxnard in 1997. By then, the company had shipped its Ten,000th CNC machine and, less than ten years later, had installed its 75,000th machine. To date, more than 175,000 Haas CNC machines have been put into service worldwide.

Based in Corona, California is Monster Beverage Corporation. Its subsidiaries develop and market energy drinks, including the brand that adorns the quarterpanels of the No. Forty one Ford – Monster Energy. A company that typically passes on traditional forms of advertising and instead earns significant brand exposure through its roster of extreme athletes, Monster Energy made the leap to the NASCAR Cup Series with Busch in 2015. Renowned for a tenacious driving style that has earned him twenty nine wins and the two thousand four Cup Series championship in a career spanning more than seventeen years, Busch fit the bill as a Monster Energy athlete. Located approximately twenty miles due south of Fontana, this weekend’s race will be a home one for Monster’s more than Two,000 employees.

While Busch may downplay that there is added pressure to perform well this weekend, he’d like nothing more than to come back to his winning ways at the 2-mile oval and give both Haas Automation and Monster Energy the trophy from their home track. While it’s been a number of years since he won there – fourteen to be exact – his latest spectacles there make him difficult to overlook.

Augmenting Busch’s Fontana win are four poles, seven top-five finishes and twelve top-10s in twenty three career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series starts there. Two of those top-fives and four of those top-10s have come in his last five starts.

Busch goes to Fontana this weekend having posted two less-than-desired finishes due to electrical issues that plagued his No. Forty one Ford. He’s looking to get back to his winning ways this weekend at Fontana by scoring both his 2nd win at the 2-mile racetrack and of the two thousand seventeen Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season.

KURT BUSCH, Driver of the No. Forty one Haas Automation/Monster Energy Ford Fusion for Stewart-Haas Racing:

Talk about heading to Auto Club Speedway this weekend and racing in the backyard of your primary sponsors Haas Automation and Monster Energy. Do you feel any extra pressure to perform there?

“It’s a lot of joy to race at Auto Club Speedway with both Haas Automation and Monster Energy headquartered nearby. I’m going to both headquarters to visit, to see all the employees. It’s a busy week. Then you want to go to the racetrack and have a good run because everybody’s there, and they’re that close to the act one time a year. So, of course you want to do well. There’s some added pressure. We want to come away with the win. We almost got it a duo of years ago but, last year, we missed the setup. You’re going to be hot, you’re going to be cold – we hope it’s a race we’re going to be hot for.”

What’s the key to success at Auto Club Speedway?

“I think the key to success is short-run speed. It always seems to come down to a green-white-checkered finish or a quick pit stop at the end to put four tires on. You’ll be five-, six-wide going down into turn one and off of two, you’ve got to find the right fuckholes at the end of the race even however you’ve been out there for four hundred miles.”

What’s the difference inbetween the asphalt at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Auto Club Speedway?

“They’re indeed similar, it’s just that there’s no banking at Auto Club Speedway compared to what we have at Atlanta. You’re indeed slip-sliding around and the tempo drops off a ton at Auto Club.”

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