CONCORD, N.C. — Twenty-three years after clinching the IROC XXV! Championship of the Crown Royal International Race of Champions where he took the measure of acclaimed drivers such as Mark Martin, Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick and Helio Castroneves, Kurt Busch raced to victory at the recent IROC exhibition race staged at Ten Tenths Motor Club.
In the very same IROC Pontiac Firebird with which he won the IROC Championship in 2003, Busch was part of a 12-lap Heritage Invitational battle with fellow NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon.
“It’s amazing,” a victorious Busch. “Just the camaraderie and the fun that we all got to have. Just seeing all the cars on the track, all the colors, and the teamwork. Everyone, from IROC, Ray Evernham – round of applause for Ray. He told me to get my car out from under a cover that it had been under for 20 years, and it’s cool. It made us feel like kids again.”
This week, a few days removed from the Ten Tenths Motor Club IROC triumph, Busch talked about the event and the afterglow he’s still feeling from his overall performance there.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Busch, 47. “And absolutely feeling the glow because of the teamwork that it took to put together a car that sat underneath a car cover for 20 years. That IROC car I raced at Indianapolis in 2003 and won the championship. The car had just been kind of sitting there and hanging out in the corner for all these years.
“Ray Evernham called a couple years back and said that he’s getting all the old IROC cars together and wanted to get as many old drivers that participated in the series and go run and have some fun. And that’s exactly what it all was, man. It was just cool to build the car back up. So to be a car owner, to be a mechanic, to be the driver and to be the PR guy and promote it all, it was so much fun just to do it with all these years of experience.”
Busch found himself all-in with the IROC project he first initiated but really didn’t have any idea what he was getting into.
“I had no idea of how much was going to go into it all,” said Busch. “When you pull the car cover off and you pull the sparkplugs out and you’ve got water coming out of the sparkplug holes, it turned into a bigger project than we thought it was going to be. But you have to do it right, you know?
“We rebuilt the engine. We were able to get an old transmission and get some nice gear ratios in it that worked for the oval, but we had to change them out for a road course. We had to get a rear end that was towed inward and cambered inward for road courses instead of for an oval. It needed a new driveshaft and new brakes and new plumbing and wiring and oil lines.
We had one test session where we were overheating a bit and so we upgraded the radiator. It was just cool to blend the nostalgia and the integrity of what the IROC cars were in the early 2000s with current day stuff in 2026.”
Did Busch realize the IROC car was going to perform as well as it did?
“You know you want to stay within the rules and the integrity of everything. We freshened up our engine and it probably had a few extra horsepower, you know? (Laughter). It wasn’t the exact specs from 2003,” Busch added. “And with the brakes, the seat and the headrest and everything, we upgraded all that stuff.. The engine was just a basic Chevy small block 355. I want to say the horsepower range is probably 600.
“These are the cars they used to race at Daytona and Talladega and the road courses and the mile and a half tracks. You know I won one race back in IROC in 2003 at Talladega. We were ripping around there at 190.
“You know we did a race last summer at Laguna Seca,” furthered Busch. “That’s what I built the car for and that’s when Ray Evernham was getting everybody together for. What we saw at Laguna Seca was that everyone started to upgrade their stuff for this year. And again, it gets into the brakes and it gets into the refreshening up the engines. So to have Mark Martin there and to have Ken Schrader and Scott Pruett and Bobby Labonte and Jeff Gordon and Tommy Kendall there was really cool. Just the camaraderie and the fun and the trash talking was just cool. Once we got into the race, it was elbows out. It was gas it up and let’s go.”
As the race itself approached, the excitement and anticipation amongst all the IROC drivers truly began to spool up.
“It was so cool,” said Busch. “The energy, the excitement, the nervousness, it was just like jumping in a Cup car for me because I always treated it seriously and went after it. There was a little bit of tire strategy. Goodyear brought a softer tire this year versus last year’s tire. If you put a scuff run on it, it helped the tire stabilize. So I went into the race on scuffs and I noticed that Jeff Gordon had stickers on and after the race he came up to me and said, ‘Man, I should have went with scuffs like you did.’ The gamesmanship was definitely there, but most importantly, it was the smiles and the banter. And I can’t even begin to tell you how big the turnout was at Ten Tenths Motor Club. I think there were 2,500 people there for the excitement, the fun and seeing all the cars. Race fans wanted autographs and pictures and it was an open paddock like you’d have at NHRA.”
Busch said despite the exhibition nature, it felt like a true race.
“The excitement, the energy, the fun was all there,” explained Busch. “We qualified first. Jeff Gordon and Bobby Labonte and I were all within a half a second of each other. That’s pretty wild to be that close after so many years of time that has gone by. We were just all smiling with one another after qualifying. It was like, ‘We’ve all still got it!’ And then with the race start and the nerves, it was like the old school checklist items. You know, ‘I’ve got to get the tires hot and have to get heat in the brakes and I’ve got to check all the switches.’ And with my guys that helped me out and volunteered, it was just so cool with the teamwork to put it all together.
“The race itself was with the drop of the green and I knew Jeff Gordon and his car would be strong on the short run. And about two or three laps in, I noticed that Jeff was quick on the fast right handers,” Busch added. “I was having a little bit of trouble turning in the fast rights. But my car had a nice cut to the left on the slow corners. I was able to accelerate hard out of those slower lefts and those were the key things because the lefts at that track lead onto the longer straightaways.
“That’s the old school of a typical road course. You know, how many rights? How many lefts? What are the important corners? I just went back into my old toolbox to execute on what I thought was important.”
Busch said the competition spirit came back in a hurry.
“Man, I wanted it,” Busch explained. “I wanted the win bad. It felt good and to do it up against Jeff and Bobby Labonte and the whole group, it was dang cool to get that trophy and to take home the W and to fill that adrenalin void.”
