NASCAR: Kurt Busch looks to make noise of his own in Chase opener - MotorSportsTalk

Between Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick, it’s probably safe to say that more people believe the latter will be Stewart-Haas Racing’s best hope to win the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

But while Busch hasn’t had the overall performance that Harvick’s had in 2014, the “Outlaw” and his No. 41 SHR team has shown steady improvement after a first half that saw him win at Martinsville but also suffer multiple DNFs.

Busch will begin the Chase this weekend at Chicagoland Speedway as the No. 10 seed. He and SHR tested at the 1.5-mile oval in Joliet, Illinois late last month.

In addition, the group has also tested at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in the lead-up to the Chase. Busch hopes that those sessions will prove valuable and help them put up good results that can ensure an advancement to the Contender Round.

“I hope we are able to take advantage of the test and not fall behind on that first practice session [Friday] – that has been some of the trouble this year and we have played a little bit of catch-up after the first Friday practice,” Busch noted in a team release.

“Now, with a test session used at Chicago, a test session used at Loudon, we have to apply that knowledge the right way and make these finishes count because that is what the Chase is all about.”

Last year at Chicagoland, Busch turned in a fourth-place effort for Furniture Row Racing. But over the years, Chicagoland has been an up-and-down track for him: One Top-5 and 7 Top-10 finishes, plus five finishes outside the Top 25.

Busch likes the place enough, but as you’ve probably guessed, it hasn’t always been lucky for him.

“An example is the 2002 race,” Busch said, referring to a race where he finished sixth for Roush Racing after starting on the front row. “We had a really fast car for that race but, for some reason after the last pit stop, the car just wasn’t handling the same as it had been. We were just way too tight and really couldn’t figure out why.

“When we got back to the shop and started going over the car, we realized that the radiator pan had come off and that’s like 100 pounds of front downforce. We were going so fast that the car bottomed out and dragged the radiator pan out. It’s just weird stuff like that.”

One could argue that Busch’s already had enough “weird stuff” happen to him in 2014, and that he definitely doesn’t want more of it on Sunday.

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INDIANAPOLIS — The first Indy 500 victory for Josef Newgarden also was the richest in race history from a record 2023 purse of just more than $17 million.

The two-time NTT IndyCar Series champion, who continued his celebration Monday morning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway earned $3.666 million for winning the 107th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

The purse and winner’s share both are the largest in the history of the Indianapolis 500.

It’s the second consecutive year that the Indy 500 purse set a record after the 2022 Indy 500 became the first to crack the $16 million mark (nearly doubling the 2021 purse that offered a purse of $8,854,565 after a crowd limited to 135,000 because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

The average payout for IndyCar drivers was $500,600 (exceeding last year’s average of $485,000).

Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Roger Penske, whose team also fields Newgarden’s No. 2 Dallara-Chevrolet, had made raising purses a priority since buying the track in 2020. But Penske but was unable to post big money purses until the race returned to full capacity grandstands last year.

The largest Indy 500 purse before this year was $14.4 million for the 2008 Indy 500 won by Scott Dixon (whose share was $2,988,065). Ericsson’s haul made him the second Indy 500 winner to top $3 million (2009 winner Helio Castroneves won $3,048,005.

Runner-up Marcus Ericsson won $1.043 million after falling short by 0.0974 seconds in the fourth-closest finish in Indy 500 history.

The 107th Indy 500 drew a crowd of at least 330,000 that was the largest since the sellout for the 100th running in 2016, and the second-largest in more than two decades, according to track officials.

“This is the greatest race in the world, and it was an especially monumental Month of May featuring packed grandstands and intense on-track action,” Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles said in a release. “Now, we have the best end card possible for the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500: a record-breaking purse for the history books.”

Benjamin Pedersen was named the Indy 500 rookie of the year, earning a $50,000 bonus.

The race’s purse is determined through contingency and special awards from IMS and IndyCar. The awards were presented Monday night in the annual Indy 500 Victory Celebration at the JW Marriott in downtown Indianapolis.

The payouts for the 107th Indy 500:

1. Josef Newgarden, $3,666,000
2. Marcus Ericsson, $1,043,000
3. Santino Ferrucci, $481,800
4. Alex Palou, $801,500
5. Alexander Rossi, $574,000
6. Scott Dixon, $582,000
7. Takuma Sato, $217,300
8. Conor Daly, $512,000
9. Colton Herta, $506,500
10. Rinus VeeKay, $556,500
11. Ryan Hunter‐Reay, $145,500
12. Callum Ilott, $495,500
13. Devlin DeFrancesco, $482,000
14. Scott McLaughlin, $485,000
15. Helio Castroneves, $481,500
16. Tony Kanaan, $105,000
17. Marco Andretti, $102,000
18. Jack Harvey, $472,000
19. Christian Lundgaard, $467,500
20. Ed Carpenter, $102,000
21. Benjamin Pedersen (R), $215,300
22. Graham Rahal, $565,500*
23. Will Power, $488,000
24. Pato O’Ward, $516,500
25. Simon Pagenaud, $465,500
26. Agustín Canapino (R), $156,300
27. Felix Rosenqvist, $278,300
28. Kyle Kirkwood, $465,500
29. David Malukas, $462,000
30. Romain Grosjean, $462,000
31. Sting Ray Robb (R), $463,000
32. RC Enerson (R), $103,000
33. Katherine Legge, $102,000

*–Broken down between two teams, $460,000 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, $105,500 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing/Cusick Motorsports