Kurt Busch and Jimmie Johnson will not be exchanging Christmas cards this off-season. They won’t be vacationing together on a Caribbean island, hunting elk in the Canadian wilderness or working on each other’s hot rods.
They also won’t be wrecking each other again this season.
Saturday’s night’s “Wonderful Pistachios 400” at Richmond International Raceway was littered with incidents involving the two former Sprint Cup Series champions. On the race track -– and even in the track’s Media Center -– the two could barely be around each other without sparks beginning to fly. With nothing to lose and little to gain, Busch and Johnson enjoyed a free-press to vent their respective spleens and pay off past debts, both real and imagined.
And pay off they did.
Busch dumped Johnson midway in Saturday’s night’s race, then called his rival “a five-time chump” when Johnson evened the score 60 laps later. For his part, Johnson climbed from his battered car after the race predicting he would “go find (Busch) and talk to him, he’ll run his mouth and we’ll go from there.”
In the post-race media briefing, Busch and Johnson sat at opposite ends of a four-man dais, doing their best to pretend the other wasn’t there. Queried by reporters about a post-race assertion that he was “in Johnson’s head,” Busch initially denied making any such statement. Provided with a written transcript of his comments, the 2004 Sprint Cup champion tore the paper in half and stalked from the room.
Now that’s love.
While Saturday’s tantrums were entertaining in the extreme, it is unlikely that they will continue any further. Fiery as each man may be in his own way, both Johnson and Busch understand that the stakes this weekend in Joliet, Ill., are infinitely higher than they were Saturday night in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Both Johnson and Busch understand that with only 10 races left to decide the 2011 Sprint Cup Series championship, there is no further room for fisticuffs. One bad finish in this year’s Chase will almost certainly mean the difference between hoisting the Sprint Cup trophy and failing to cross the stage at NASCAR’s annual post-season awards banquet.
In fact, both drivers said as much following Saturday night’s race.
“Time will tell,” said Johnson. “It’s in his hands. It is what it is. It’s unfortunate we couldn’t finish where we were supposed to tonight, but we’ll go to Chicago and we’ll have a good race.”
Busch was also focused on a clean, incident-free start to the 2011 Chase, saying, “I’m good with where we are. We raced hard, (and) we’ve got good cars that are not too terribly wrecked. He’s been able to beat guys the last five years just by out-driving them with what he has for equipment. If he wants to switch equipment, let’s see what we can do. But I’m going to beat him fair and square with my Penske Dodge.”
Saturday night provided an entertaining interlude of demolition derby in the midst of the Sprint Cup season. But now, it's time to get back to real racing.
Jimmie can 'check it' for the chase, but Kurt's history shows he has a hard time of letting things go. We're just in the eye of the storm.
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