January 4, 2007

By Rebecca Gladden

Rebecca Gladden

Originally, I had intended to call this piece, "Top Five NASCAR Nextel Cup Feuds of 2006."

But in retrospect, none of the incidents really rises to the level of an all-out feud. In this era of the more politically correct NASCAR, drivers are encouraged to settle disputes as quickly as possible rather than allowing them to escalate to the level of a full-scale feud.

Still, emotions run high when big bucks and bragging rights are on the line, leading to some of the more memorable moments - and quotable quotes - of the past season.

Remember these?

5. Carl Edwards vs. Tony Stewart - Pocono, July 23

Although it was Clint Bowyer whom Stewart hit first on Lap 31 of the Pennsylvania tri-oval, Edwards - an innocent victim of the incident - was the most outspoken about Stewart's driving tactics. Edwards subsequently spun Stewart on pit road under caution, and both he and Stewart were penalized a lap for aggressive driving. Edwards finished the race in 39th place and cited the incident as one of the main reasons his team missed the Chase, while Stewart finished 7th and Bowyer 41st. The bickering continued weeks later when Edwards labeled Stewart a moron and Tony nicknamed Carl, "the Eddie Haskell of NASCAR."

Carl Edwards: "Man, I've got to choose my words carefully. Let me just say this. If it weren't for respect of the sport and the people watching and this team and everything, he'd be out there bleeding right now. That's so frustrating. How can a person make it this far in life being that much of a jerk? He turned into Clint and took both him and I out, and probably made it just about impossible for us to make the Chase. And then when I pull up beside him and wave my hand like, 'what was that about?' he gives me the finger. I mean, what a jerk. I don't even know what to say. It's amazing to me that someone can be that special. I want to like Tony. He's a hard racer and all that, but how can you like somebody like that? It's just amazing. If you hold that guy up, like if he thinks you held him up, he gets so upset and then he can wreck two guys and give you the finger. That's spectacularly self-centered. I can't imagine being like that."

Tony Stewart: "If the 3 car was here, I don't think we would have the same problems in this series as we have. He always had a way of letting drivers know where they stood and when to move and when not to move. It's just the first-year and second-year drivers that don't understand that there needs to be a little give and take. There is only a handful of guys that don't get it, but the problem is they are in good racecars and they don't run up front enough to learn from the rest of us how to race up front. Ask some veterans and ask the guys that I run up front with every week. I think I'm a pretty fair driver to those guys. If I'm wrong on that, I'll quit. I'll give you my hard card and retire tomorrow. But I'm pretty sure that those guys are going to say I race pretty fair 99 out of 100 times."

4. Brian Vickers vs. Jimmie Johnson - Talladega, October 23

It's never good when one teammate wrecks another on the last lap of a race, especially when the victim is vying for a championship. But that was indeed the scenario at the fall race in Talladega where Vickers, desperate for his first Cup victory, spun teammate Jimmie Johnson and another Chase competitor, Dale Earnhardt Jr., on the final lap. Ironically, Vickers, who had already announced his intention to leave Hendrick Motor Sports at the end of the 2006 season, had complained that he was being snubbed as a teammate at HMS.

Brian Vickers: "If I would have not touched him and laid off of him, we would have finished one, two, three - Junior, Jimmie and me. I apologize. That is the last thing I want to do is to get into Jimmie. But when the 8 chopped him and Jimmie swerved, I just got him. The last thing I wanted to do was wreck either one of those guys, but what happened, happened. It wasn't intentional. It's definitely mixed emotions for me, being my first win but also what happened with Jimmie, because he is my friend and also a teammate as well."

Jimmie Johnson: "The only way to win was to crash us both. Knowing the situation we're all in, I would hope that someone would be a little more patient than they were back there. I know he was trying to get his first win, but he was in a position to finish second or third the way that was, and he gave me a push from behind and pushed me into (Earnhardt) and off we went ... It's absolutely uncalled for, completely out of line. I'm racing for a championship, okay?"

3. Jeff Gordon vs. Matt Kenseth (Part 2) - Chicago, July 9

Ding, ding! It was Round Two in the 2006 Gordon vs. Kenseth middleweight match (see No. 1 below for the first round), as Gordon punted Kenseth with four laps to go in Chicago. Gordon won the race while Kenseth, who was convinced that the hit was retaliation for Bristol, finished 22nd.

Jeff Gordon: "He can say whatever about payback. I'm not going to question it because whether it is or whether it isn't, it's not even an issue anymore. What happened at Bristol, it happened, just like what happened here. It's a non-issue. It's racing. I got the bad end of it at Bristol. He got the bad end of it (here). There's nothing to talk about. I look forward to racing Matt Kenseth hard and clean. I hope the same goes for him."

Matt Kenseth: "I think that anybody, honestly, that's watched more than two or three races in their lives and watched the replay knows that he meant to spin me out. My car was pushing so bad that you had to hit it pretty hard to spin it out. The weird thing is that he would have passed me the next lap anyway - he was catching me so fast. You can clearly see when I got in the corner we both got out of the gas, and he just picked up the gas a car length or so earlier and drove me over. I think it was intentional, but it doesn't really matter what I think."

2. Matt Kenseth vs. Tony Stewart - Daytona, February 19

In a clear case of "do as I say, not as I do," Tony Stewart sent Matt Kenseth flying through the infield grass on Lap 107 at Daytona, just a week after Stewart issued this dire warning regarding aggressive driving: "Five years from now, we're probably going to have to do another tribute to another driver, because we're probably going to kill somebody. It could be me. It could be Dale Junior, it could be anybody out there.'' Stewart was sent to the end of the longest line, but Kenseth was also penalized after a subsequent retaliatory bump on pit road. It was one of several on-track incidents involving Stewart that day.

Matt Kenseth: "Tony took me out intentionally. There's no two ways about it. He was mad because earlier in the race when I passed him he got loose - which I didn't think I did anything wrong; I thought I left him plenty of room. That's the same way he raced - I actually learned that from him racing here close to people. So he wrecked me intentionally and got put to the end of the longest line. I thought Mike Helton did a great job this week explaining it in the drivers meeting that it was about aggressive driving and not necessarily bump drafting. I'm just really disappointed. Tony went out and said all that stuff earlier in the week - if he's worried about people's lives and everything, and then he's going to wreck you on purpose at 190? I wasn't too happy about that."

Tony Stewart: "I got penalized, but they didn't penalize him for getting me sideways. He should have been smart enough to know not to be tucking down our doors in the first 20 laps of a 200-lap race at Daytona. He has no room to complain. He started the whole thing and I finished it.''

1. Jeff Gordon vs. Matt Kenseth (Part 1) - Bristol, March 26

It was the shove heard 'round the world. Matt Kenseth turned Jeff Gordon on the last lap of the spring race at Bristol Motor Speedway, after Kenseth himself had been bumped by Kurt Busch a few laps earlier. Busch won the race with Kenseth third, while Gordon, who was running fourth at the time finished in 21st place finish. After the race, Kenseth approached Gordon on pit road, apparently to apologize for the contact. Gordon, who had just climbed from his machine and was still wearing his helmet, met Kenseth with a two-handed shove in the chest. The two were then separated by a race official, and Gordon was eventually fined $10,000 and placed on probation through August.

Jeff Gordon: "For years I was just so concerned with 'what was this person going to think and what was that person going to think,' and I was more caught up in that than I was in being true to myself. What you see today is a more truer Jeff Gordon and who I really am. I'm not a robot; I have a personality and I have emotions and I have a humorous side to me and an angry side to me. I feel like I'm a fairly normal person. I guess I understand why I did some of the things that I did coming into this sport. I felt like an outsider. I felt like I wasn't a guy that is your typical NASCAR driver at that time - a guy who grew up in stock cars or from the southeast - and I felt like I needed to do extra things to be accepted. Some fans did and some fans didn't, but more of it was about being accepted within the garage area and earning respect within the garage area, so I chose to go that path. Now that I've established myself and I'm older and understand life a little bit more, just really the way for me to enjoy life and enjoy racing more is to be me."

Matt Kenseth: "(Gordon) raced hard all day long and he worked for his third-place finish, and he got it unfairly taken away from him in the last corner and finished 20th or whatever. I would have been ticked off, too. I probably should have known better than to go over there, but I just think that when you do something wrong you should try to be a man about it and go apologize - even though I knew that wasn't going to do any good. That wasn't going to bring his finish back, so I should have probably known better than to go over there to start with."

Rather whets the appetite for 2007, doesn't it?

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