The last time Kurt Busch raced at Bristol Motor Speedway in August, he did exactly one thing right – he won the Sharpie 500. On every other front, the weekend was a disaster. Busch came to Bristol on the heels of a post-race incident with Jimmy Spencer the previous weekend at Michigan. In another flare-up of what had long been a tempestuous relationship between Busch and Spencer, the two had bumped in the garage area following the Michigan race and Spencer wound up whapping Busch in the nose. In some ways, it was remarkable to see Busch go from victim to villain in the aftermath of that incident. In other ways, it was painful to watch. NASCAR suspended Spencer for the Bristol weekend, so he wasn’t at the track to address the issue – or to stick a foot in his mouth. So Busch did it. Instead of keeping quiet and starting to allow the matter to blow over, he heaped fuel on the fire with comments that were either inappropriately brash or provably untrue. Remember, it was Busch who got punched in the nose while sitting in his car at Michigan on Sunday. But by the end of the Bristol race the following Saturday night he was the bad guy being booed – lustily – by more than 150,000 fans. “I probably reacted to all of that 99 percent wrongly,” Busch admitted Saturday as he prepared for the Food City 500.(see ThatsRacin.com for the full article)(3-28-2004)
