by Larry McReynolds

Pat Tryson's contact with driver Kurt Busch and the rest of the team has been limited since the disclosure he'll be leaving at the end of the season. (Rusty Jarrett / Getty Images)

They qualified 12th which isn't bad. But based on their standards and considering how well they ran in practice, they were pretty disappointed. Had they qualified up there where they figure they should have, well then obviously they wouldn't have been put in this position.

But it happened and now for a couple of the Chase competitors and for the excitement of the Chase, well it kind of has made a new game of it. Don't get me wrong, going to Phoenix with a 73-point lead is still pretty stout. I still say you won't overcome that points lead with performance. Mark Martin can go out and lead the most laps and win these last two races but it won't be enough to win the championship unless some more bad luck strikes the No. 48.

I was pretty impressed with what that No. 2 car did. It sure says a lot about quality of character in crew chief Pat Tryson. Remember that he is leaving at the end of the year to go to Michael Waltrip Racing. He's not allowed at Penske Racing but one day a week so basically he shows up at the race track and darn if they didn't win the thing.

The bottom line is this is just not a good situation over at the No. 2 car for anybody yet Pat makes it work. I respect Pat for making the announcement early and not keeping it to himself until the season was over. You have to respect Penske for finding a way to make it work until Homestead is over. Then you have to respect that race team for rallying around both the driver, Kurt Busch, and Pat to make it happen.

This team Sunday got its second win of the season in a very dominating car. Sure, Kurt's brother, Kyle, probably had the best car. For me it would have been pretty cool to see Kyle win the Cup race because as everyone knows, he would have made NASCAR history by winning all three of our top series events at the same track on the same weekend.

Sure, there are going to be folks out there that say the No. 2 car only won on strategy and fuel mileage. But folks, he had a darn good car all day long. They unloaded fast on Friday. They qualified third and then took the lead on lap 13. Kurt then led a big part of that race. So my point was they truly earned this win.

What's interesting if you listened to the post-race interviews with Kurt and Pat, after that last caution and pit stop at around lap 207, they literally started thinking about fuel conservation right there and then. They worked on stretching their mileage and it paid off because they stretched farther than anyone else on that next run. That next run included a green flag pit stop and they pitted later than anybody.

My point is with still a third of the race still to be run, they were already trying to figure out how to get to the end of this thing. I think that's why you didn't see any domination from them that last third of the race. They didn't and couldn't flex their muscle because they were in fuel conservation mode.

I think both Busch brothers are awesome race car drivers. Kurt is very smart and methodical. Kyle is more prone to simply drive the wheels off whatever he climbs into. But at the end of the day, they are both just phenomenal. Sure their styles are different, but trust me, Mom and Dad Busch have to be very proud parents.

Sunday's race was probably one of the least controversial races we've had in a long, long time. What I mean by that is we only had five cautions. There weren't any of those debris cautions that had you scratching your head. I also don't think that anyone got penalized for anything during the race. To me it was a totally clean, non-controversial 500 mile race.