Busch bringing 'Special' car to Texas looking for victory

Kurt Busch is ninth in points -- a whopping 419 behind leader Jeff Gordon with three Chase races remaining -- but positions 4 through 12 are up in the air.

"Right now, we're 158 points out of fourth [Carl Edwards], but we're only 94 ahead of 12th [Martin Truex Jr.]," Busch said. "There's a lot on the line out there during the final three races and we'll be looking to climb as far as possible."

He trails fifth-place Tony Stewart by 97 points; sixth-place Kyle Busch by 91 points; seventh-place Kevin Harvick by 27 points and eighth-place Jeff Burton by 19 points.

Busch and the Pat Tryson-led Penske Racing Team will be racing the "PT Special" Miller Lite Dodger at Texas. In its former life the car was the "PSC-078" that the team raced at Texas on April 15. Little did the crew realize that the strange set of circumstances that Friday the 13th dished out in April helped the "evolutionary process," turning their "PSC-078" into the "PT Special," a winning intermediate track workhorse for the team today.

Ten laps into the second practice session that day -- after rain had shortened the first practice -- something went wrong with Busch's car and he plowed into the Turn 2 wall. "I don't know, something just broke on the right-front," he said on the team radio when the car known as "Rusty" came to rest on the apron. (The "PSC-090" chassis was dubbed "Rusty" after winning the March 2005 Bristol race. Rusty Wallace, former driver of the Miller Lite Dodge, had driven the same car in his final two races at Bristol and Busch paid tribute to Wallace by naming his winning Dodge "Rusty" in Victory Lane.)

Only 20 minutes after the crash, Busch was able to climb into his backup car -- the "PSC-078" -- and turn in four laps of practice before the session was over.

With hard rain, hail and a tornado warning in the area, NASCAR pulled the plug on qualifying and the field was set by car owner points. Busch started 17th worked his way up to the front; he was in the top 10 after only 24 laps and was in the top five for the first time on Lap 102. A late-race caution put a halt to his potential winning run, relegating him to an 11th-place finish.

"The great thing that came out of the spring Texas race was that Pat saw such great potential with that particular car, and it's the first one he selected to take and do his magic on," Busch said. "He rebuilt the car for the August race at Pocono and everybody knows the rest of that story. We started outside pole and led all but 25 laps, which is the record for dominating and winning a Pocono race. It was only appropriate to name the car the 'PT Special' in honor of Pat after winning that one."

Busch was quick with a sense of humor when asked about returning to Texas after his strange racing experience there in April. "Thank goodness Halloween is Wednesday night and that will be all over and done with before we even start to head out to Texas this time around. Hopefully, about the only weird thing we'll be facing this weekend is the end of daylight savings time early race day morning."

• Remember to "fall back" this weekend; turn back your clocks one hour as the time officially changes at 2:00 a.m. Sunday.