I’ve never been one to run away from drama, perhaps to my own detriment.
Still, when I look back at 2012 — the year I won the championship — I had a lot of run-ins. I made some people mad, but I also drew a line in the sand and said, “I’m here.”
I had a lot of success with that approach.
In 2013, I got away from that, mostly because I thought the way I did things in 2012 somehow tarnished winning the championship. But with a little bit of hindsight, there’s a part of me now that says maybe that’s what made me so strong in 2012. I wasn’t afraid to fight off controversy. I wasn’t afraid to put my neck out there on the line a little bit, and go for it. I wasn’t afraid to show people that this is where I’m at, this is my passion, this is what I do and who I am, and I’m going to be the best at it.
So with that in mind, let’s talk about Kurt Busch and last weekend at Martinsville.
THE ABSOLUTE PITS
What most people probably don’t realize is that everything that happened Sunday actually started with a slow pit stop. We made some changes to our pit crew to start the season, and while we’re all working hard as a team, we’re still working out the kinks. I feel we have fast enough speed in our cars to run for the championship in 2014. When we find our consistency on pit road, we’ll have all the pieces.
We came out of our pit stop about two seconds slow. When that happened, it put me out of sync with the cars I was running around. So I didn’t know who was where or where I was supposed to be. The 31 car — who had been behind me when we entered pit road — came out three or four cars in front of me. And right in front of me was Kasey Kahne.
When you see Kasey Kahne in pit road, your natural assumption — him being the level of driver he is and his team being the caliber that it is — is that you’re racing him for position at that moment. That was not the reality of the matter. Kasey had trouble before that sequence and got torn up. He was running at the very back of the pack. And rather than exiting pit road with me, he was actually just turning into his stall.
There was barely time to react. I hit the brakes and turned right, but I’d already made pretty severe contact with Kasey.
Then Kurt hit me pretty hard. Pit road speed is about 35 mph there, which is relatively slow. When you see contact in front of you, usually you slow down, or you’re able to slow down to 15 or 20 mph. When I hit Kasey, I was probably going 15 or 20 mph. So when Kurt hit me, I thought it was really strange that he had hit me so hard — hard enough to tear the right front suspension off the car.
The Blanco Deuce was broken so bad we had to head back to the garage. After I got out of the car, I caught a replay of what had happened.
I misjudged the situation and ran into the back of Kasey, which I pretty much already knew. What I hadn’t seen before was that in the stall right behind Kasey’s, the 9 car was dropping the jack to take off just as Kasey was turning in. That’s why the 5 car stopped even harder than I thought he would.
Then I saw how Kurt had hit me.
DO AS LITTLE HARM AS POSSIBLE
As a race car driver, if there’s an accident, it’s our duty — not just for ourselves but for our fellow competitors out there — to try to diminish it, to lessen the impact as much as possible. Imagine you’re at Talladega. If there’s a wreck at 200 mph in front of you, and you are capable of slowing down to 100 mph, you do it. Self-preservation alone just dictates that, but it’s kind of an unspoken rule between drivers. (At Bristol a couple weekends back, Kasey didn’t lift after David Ragan wrecked, and Dale Jr. had some words for him afterward.)
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This was a great read and hopefully made some people realize what really happened. When this incident occurred at Martinsville, I said the exact same thing that you just described. Kurt is definitely a talented driver and Champion, but sometimes his recklessness has cost you. At Kentucky in 2013, Kurt drove onto the apron (Which is not a good idea at Kentucky) and lost control of his car and then slid right into you and wrecked you. That hurt your chances for making the Chase and it was a shame to see your car get destroyed from a bone-head mistake by Kurt. And here at Martinsville, he didn’t attempt to stop at all when you slowed down for Kasey, and he crushed your car. It was too early in the race to be that aggressive on pit road by Kurt. This was the second time in a year that he ruined your day. You could have been a jerk and gone out there and turned him into the fence, but instead you bumped him and showed displeasure without putting his safety in danger. In NASCAR, competitors won’t respect you if you let them take advantage of you. You showed that you won’t be taken advantage of and by staying on the track you also showed that the 2 team never quits. Keep making us fans proud to root for you. Go Brad and Team Penske!