March 29, 2006

By Rebecca Gladden

Rebecca Gladden

Ding, ding. Round One - Bristol - is over.

Drivers, to your corners.

Round Two - Martinsville - is just days away.

When NASCAR rolls into Virginia later this week, it will bring with it a load of ill will fostered on the half-mile cement oval of Bristol.

In 2000, Dale Earnhardt Sr., winner of nine Bristol races, summarized the key to winning there in just two words: "Anger management." But there was little of that on display in Sunday's Food City 500, as drivers engaged in pre-race trash talking, post-race shoving, and a myriad of on-track incidents.

The word wars actually began during last Monday's Cup race in Atlanta. Kurt Busch was running third when he was squeezed into the wall on a Lap 125 restart by Kevin Harvick, who was a lap down at the time. Busch finished 37th and Harvick 39th.

Busch responded to the incident with an angry tirade on his in-car radio, prompting Penske team president Don Miller to say of his driver, "He did lose it."

Later, during a Friday press conference at Bristol, Harvick was asked if there was one misconception about himself that he would like to correct. "I think I'd have probably whooped Kurt Busch before now," Harvick replied. "Obviously (he) forgot about getting punched in the nose last time from Jimmy Spencer. I probably shouldn't have said that. I'll still tell ya' what I think. I'd still like to whip his ass. Before the year is over, he'll make a fool out of Roger Penske. We'll just have to wait and see. But anyway, I shouldn't have said that either. It's hard not to pick on a guy when his ears are pinned back. I should stop. My wife is looking at me like 'you should really stop.' "

As Sunday's race got underway, many were waiting to see whether the Busch-Harvick dispute would play out on the track.

"Harvick? I've got no problem with him," Busch said after Bristol. "I race him clean. I race everybody clean."

Busch's former teammate Matt Kenseth begs to differ.

Kenseth led a total of 124 laps and was leading with five to go when he was slowed by lapped traffic. Busch, running second, caught Kenseth and tagged his rear bumper, sliding the No. 17 out of the way and taking the lead. Busch went on to win the race.

"When I caught up to him, he was real tight in the center of one and two," Busch stated. "He got loose. I bumped into him a little bit and that was our window to go for the lead. If I was still a teammate with him, maybe I would have let him lift, but I was hungry to drive the Miller Lite Dodge into Victory Lane."

Regarding the bump and run, Kenseth argued, "As good of a relationship Kurt and I have had, and as good of friends as we've become, and as much as we've always respected each other on the track - teammates or not teammates - I couldn't have done that to him. I was just barely away from wrecking the car. If he would have drove in the corner and moved me up the track and passed me like Jeff did to Rusty here with that famous move, I'd say, 'That was pretty cool. That was a good, clean move. He hit me and moved me out of the way. I didn't almost wreck.' But he hit me so hard, I did everything but wreck. I don't think I could have done that to him and brought my trophy home and felt good tonight and been smiling and sleeping. But that's just me. Everybody is different."

Just ask Jeff Gordon, who had a few opinions of his own. Gordon was running third on the last lap of the race when Kenseth got into the back of the No. 24 and sent it spinning to a 21st-place finish.

Kenseth, who claimed that the contact was unintentional, approached Gordon's car on pit road immediately after the race to apologize. Gordon met Kenseth with an aggressive shove that caught Kenseth by surprise and knocked him back several steps. "We were all racing hard there at the end for position and he was holding everybody up," Gordon explained. "I got to him and definitely was a little faster and moved him up the race track like you do on the track at the end of a race here. We went down into one and he decided to wreck me instead. It is pretty disappointing. We had a great car. I am sorry that happened. I like racing with Matt. I certainly didn't enjoy racing with him today. I showed him my displeasure. I get fired up, too. I like Matt a lot. I like racing with him, but I felt like that was uncalled for."

Kenseth expressed sympathy for Gordon's anger. "He 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 gonna do any good. That wasn't gonna bring his finish back, so I should have probably known better than to go over there to start with. I really didn't mean it and I know he probably doesn't believe that, but we kind of got slowed up with a lapped car and I got in there too hot and I just couldn't get slowed down. When I did hit him, I got off the gas as much as I could. I didn't think I hit him that hard, but I did."

The Harvick-Busch, Busch-Kenseth, and Kenseth-Gordon match-ups will be headlining the fight card this weekend at Martinsville, but there were several other incidents in Bristol that may appear on the undercard. 18 cautions on the day accounted for 104 laps and a whole lot of short-track short tempers.

Gentlemen, touch racing gloves and come out fighting.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN. Although we may not always agree with what is said, we do feel it's our duty to give a voice to those who have something relevant to say about the sport of auto racing.