NASCAR Champ Busch Bolts Roush for Penske

Reigning Nextel Cup champion Kurt Busch has signed a contract to drive for Penske Racing South in 2007 and asked to be released from his current contract with Roush Racing, apparently in hopes of replacing retiring Rusty Wallace next season.

“Yeah, we have signed him up for 2007,” Penske team president Don Miller told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “As for anything else, the lawyers tell us we can’t really comment. We’ll just have to see how things shake out.

“Kurt Busch is a great driver and Ryan (Newman) said he is looking forward to having him as a teammate and working with him.”

Newman is the current teammate of Wallace, the 1989 series champion, who is retiring at the end of the 2005 season, leaving a vacant seat in the No. 2 Dodge.

Penske put out a statement saying Busch had signed a long-term contract.

In its own statement, Roush said the team will wait for “an indefinite period” before making a decision on Busch’s request to leave after this season. The team said it would have no additional comment on the split.

Roush is in much the same situation as the Penske team, with Jamie McMurray, currently driving for Chip Ganassi Racing, signed for 2007 to replace Mark Martin, who is planning to retire at the end of this season.

Ganassi has an option on McMurray in 2006 and has insisted he will not be let out of his contract. That leaves the No. 6 Ford without a driver for 2006, although Martin has said he would consider staying for another year if Jack Roush, his longtime boss, needs him.

But Wallace, a part owner of the Penske team along with Roger Penske and Miller, has said repeatedly this will be his final year in the driver’s seat.

Busch stands fifth in this year’s points race, 277 points behind leader Tony Stewart. After a slow start to his Cup defense, he has finished in the top 10 in four of his past six races, but slipped to an 18th-place finish Sunday in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard in Indianapolis.

With victories this season at Pocono and Phoenix, Busch seems a solid bet to be among the top 10 drivers in the points standings when NASCAR resets the field for its 10-race Chase for the Championship following the Sept. 10 race in Richmond, Va.

Busch has been with Roush since 2000, when Jack Roush hired him to drive in the Craftsman Truck Series.

He won four races that year and finished second in the points standings, leading Roush to move him straight to NASCAR’s top series without the traditional intermediate stop on the second-tier Busch Series.

He won his first Cup race in 2002 and had four wins that season. For his Cup career, Bush has 13 wins in 171 starts.

Busch is one of five drivers racing in the Nextel Cup series for Roush. The others are Mark Martin, Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards.

Busch, who turned 27 last week, was the third-youngest champion in NASCAR history when he won the title last season.

He recently said he felt his team was poised to make a run for back-to-back titles, something no one has done since Jeff Gordon in 1997 and 1998.

“We’re up to the challenge again,” Busch said. “At this point in the season, everybody feels a little bit of pressure to lay the hammer down a little bit harder.”

Busch has a history of feuds with rival drivers – Jimmy Spencer punched him in the nose in 2003 – and run-ins with NASCAR officials.

Earlier this year, after a tantrum at Darlington that included expletives directed at NASCAR officials over his in-car radio, Busch was placed on unofficial probation by NASCAR and given notice that the sanctioning body would tolerate no more bad behavior.