Daniel Knost, rookie crew chief for 2004 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Kurt Busch and the No. 41 Haas Automation team for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), is still learning each week, but he has reason to be optimistic heading into Saturday night’s Richmond 400 at the .75-mile Richmond (Va.) International Raceway oval.
Knost, only eight races into his rookie campaign as a Sprint Cup crew chief, already has one Sprint Cup win on a Virginia short track. He helped Busch end an 83-race Sprint Cup winless streak at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway in March when he secured his first and only win as the team leader. He also has another reason to be optimistic heading into this weekend.
Richmond is one of two racetracks where Kurt Busch has won in both Sprint Cup and the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Busch first won at Richmond in the Sprint Cup Series in September 2005, when he led 185 laps of the 400-lap race. He won again in April 2012, this time driving for his brother’s Nationwide Series team Kyle Busch Motorsports, when he led 68 of 250 laps.
Last September, Busch was in position to score his second Sprint Cup win at Richmond when he led five times for 73 laps and finished 0.668 of a second behind race winner Carl Edwards.
That means Knost is leading a team capable of winning, with a driver who has won at the Richmond racetrack in two different NASCAR touring series and came within a fraction of a second of scoring his second Sprint Cup win last fall. Knost also views Richmond as unfinished business.
In 2013, Knost was the lead race engineer for the No. 39 team for SHR, a team he feels had a win taken from it at Richmond last September.
The No. 39 team was in position to score a much-needed win to secure its spot in the 12-team Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship. A win would have given it two wins on the season and secured the final wild card spot in the Chase. On lap 394, with only six laps remaining and a comfortable lead, a car spun on the front stretch to bring out a caution and bunch up the field. The No. 39 came to pit road and returned to the race in third place, unable to recover the lost positions in the closing laps. The No. 39 team finished the regular season tied in points and wins with the No. 56 car, but the No. 56 won the tie-breaker by securing more second-place finishes.
Knost and the No. 39 crew found it tough to watch the Chase contenders celebrating on the Richmond front stretch stage as they walked out of the racetrack and headed for home.
Knost knows the No. 41 team’s win in March at Martinsville virtually guarantees the team a spot in the 2014 Chase, but adding a second win would cement its place in the 10-race playoff. SHR teammate Kevin Harvick is the first driver to score multiple wins on the season, and Busch is one of six single-race winners as the series heads to race nine of 36.
In 26 career starts at Richmond, Busch has one win, five top-five finishes and nine top-10s with an average finish of 17th. He also has led 457 laps at Richmond, most recently when he led 73 laps last September.
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