Kyle Busch watched Sunday’s race from the team’s pit box after NASCAR parked him for the weekend for his incident in Friday night’s truck race. Michael McDowell drove the car and finished 33rd. Crew chief Dave Rogers said Kyle addressed the team Sunday morning. He called me last night and said, ‘Hey Dave, I’d really like to meet with the team,’ ” Rogers said. “Can you have a team meeting this morning?’ So we got everyone together and Kyle asked everybody, he looked them in the eye straight-up, man to man, ‘This is where I stand, this is what I did, this is how I feel.’ He didn’t sugar-coat anything, didn’t make excuses for anything, but he leveled with the team. That honesty is a strength of this race team. We are honest with each other whether things are going good or bad. He did that today and that made the guys feel good because it’s like, ‘Okay, that’s our teammate.’ He’s not sugar-coating things. Then, at the end he asked the guys if they would mind if he sat on the pit box with us. That’s something that he wanted to do, but he was humble enough to actually ask his pit crew members if that would be okay. Unanimously everyone started screaming ‘Yes, we want you there.’ So, I think Kyle handled today like a professional. It would have been much easier for him to get on an airplane and fly home and feel sorry for himself and he didn’t. He was obviously disappointed, but he stood there and he backed his race team from flag to flag and I appreciate it. I know all the guys appreciate it. I don’t know what he could have done better today. He apologized to the guys for not being in the race car. You know, and he apologized at length and let everyone know where he stood. I think everyone was comfortable with that.”(Virginian-Pilot)(11-7-2011)
