DOVER, Del. – Three laps into last week's Nextel Cup race in New Hampshire, Kurt Busch and crew chief Jimmy Fennig – courtesy of a torn-up car – were tearing up their original game plan for repeating as Nextel Cup champions.

An early-race wreck and lengthy repairs put the No. 97 car out of contention at Loudon, and Busch left the track facing a 142-point deficit to leader Tony Stewart – and with a whole new perspective on the remainder of the season.

He and Fennig rewrote their strategy.

"Now we have to go and attack each race for a win," Busch said after the race. "We have to go to Dover and expect to win and try to build our points back up."

Busch is trying to show that he is a man of his word.

Friday, Busch qualified his Roush Racing Taurus 10th for Sunday's MBNA RacePoints 400. Loudon winner Ryan Newman will start from the pole.

With this weekend's race being a non-impound event, teams concentrated on qualifying setups Friday knowing they would have two practice sessions Saturday morning to work on their race setups.

"It was good to go back to this regular format of seeing who is the fastest ... it's a good start for us," Busch said after qualifying. "We just hope we stay out of trouble on lap three and go for the whole distance this time."

On Saturday morning, a cold front brought overcast skies and air temperatures nearly 20 degrees cooler than Friday's 90-degree temperatures, changing the race track considerably.

Fennig responded with the kind of changes to the race car that gave Busch enough speed to top the charts for not just one but both of the day's practice sessions. It was a statement that Busch needed to make to himself, his team and to the rest of the participants in the Chase: The No. 97 team isn't lying down just yet, despite a rough first step.

"The car is fast and we've made some good adjustments to sort out the tight versus loose balance," Busch said. "We're gonna do everything we possibly can to gain some points and go fast. So far in two practices we've been fast in race trim and that's what it takes – you've got to be fast on Sunday."

Dover hasn't been one of Busch's better tracks, however. In his 10 Cup races at the Magic Mile, he has scored just one top-five and three top-10 finishes.

"This one is tough," Busch said of Dover's high-banked, all-concrete racing surface. "It changes sporadically throughout the race with rubber buildup. You have to race the race track. You really don't worry about the competition. If you race the track here, you can end up with a better result."

Dover's tricky surface is well known for contributing to multi-car wrecks. Usually they occur after a restart when the field is bunched together.

Saturday's Busch Series race had two multi-car wrecks – one involving 13 cars shortly after the start of the race on the third lap and another on lap 12 that involved six cars.

Dover's narrow pit road – one of NASCAR's tightest – offers another place to make a mistake. With 43 cars jammed into its limited space on the front straight, expect a few drivers to run into each other on race day.

"There are tight quarters on pit road," said Busch, who suggested that track officials should make some changes to make pit road, including widening it to make it easier to pull out of the pit boxes.

"We picked a pit box towards the end so there's less chance of running into people."

In the Chase, the common wisdom is that drivers get one mulligan. Busch already has used his, and one more might spell the end to his title hopes.

"It's just the same old deal, you've got to go race your car," Busch said. "We saw Jimmie Johnson go on a tear last year and win four out of the last 10.

"This is a tough way to go about it being behind, but for nine weeks we've got to race as hard as we can."

Helton lays down the law

In the drivers meeting prior to Saturday's Busch Series race, NASCAR president Mike Helton addressed the recent on-track incidents – which have included wrecks, retaliations, confrontations under caution and colorful language and gestures – seen in both Busch and Cup races.

Helton warned drivers, crew chiefs and team owners that NASCAR "has had enough" of these on-track activities. He read aloud, word for word, from the official Busch Series rule book, Section 12-2 – the Emergency Action section. It states:

If the act or omission of a member is determined by a NASCAR official or supervisory official to constitute a threat to the orderly conduct of the event, that NASCAR official may take temporary emergency action against the member. Such emergency action may include ejection from the racing premises, suspension of membership and license, or any other action designed to remove the threat created by the member.

Helton then reminded those present that this was not a bulletin or a new rule. It had always been in both series' rule books and that starting immediately NASCAR will enforce the rule to the letter, meaning drivers and teams shouldn't be surprised to see severe penalties handed down in the future.

Helton is expected to deliver an identical message during Sunday morning's Nextel Cup drivers meeting.

Stewart's worries

When asked about his close, side-by-side racing with Ryan Newman at New Hampshire, Stewart had nothing but praise for the race winner.

"Ryan could have easily gone right in there and really hit me hard and ran me up the hill and he didn't do that," Stewart said. "In there with two to go, most guys would have done anything they could do to get by. He got under there, but he didn't just run me straight up the hill. He ran me up a little bit but nothing that was not in the competitive nature of the sport."

Stewart says he expects the 10 drivers in the Chase will race each other cleanly for the remaining nine races.

"Then you see things like what happened with the guys outside the top 10 and those are the guys we really have to worry about," Stewart said.

Veteran motorsports writer Bob Margolis is Yahoo! Sports' NASCAR reporter. Send Bob a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.

Updated on Saturday, Sep 24, 2005 8:18 pm, EDT

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