NASCAR Drivers in a Pit Row
To the Delight of Many, Circuit Has Eased Rules on Behavior

By Liz Clarke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 1, 2008

DOVER, Del., May 31 -- With television ratings slipping for a second consecutive year, NASCAR chairman Brian France announced in January that stock-car racing officials wouldn't be so quick to punish drivers for bad behavior in 2008.

The time had come, France conceded, to loosen the grip on a rule book that many felt was squelching drivers' personalities and encourage them to vent their emotions, giving fans new reasons to cheer or jeer.

It's doubtful Kyle Busch needed France's green light to flaunt just what drives him. He has displayed his persona with abandon this season, roaring to the top of the Sprint Cup standings with gutsy passes and gaudy celebrations following his three victories, replete with tire-smoking burnouts and bows worthy of Pavarotti. Busch has been equally effusive when riled, peppering his radio transmissions with crass trash-talk and flipping his middle finger at whoever irks him.

To some, Busch's outbursts are what the sport needs. After all, NASCAR had a fistfight to thank for vaulting the sport from relative obscurity into the national spotlight in 1979, when that year's Daytona 500 ended with a brawl between Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison.

"What gets people more excited than anything? A fight!" veteran racer Mark Martin said. "That doesn't fit in the category of good sportsmanship, but it gets my wife up on the edge of the couch when a fight breaks out."

Car owner Richard Childress sees no problem with it. His most famous driver, the late Dale Earnhardt, certainly flashed his anger on the track, although the Intimidator tended to speak with his car's bumper rather than his mouth. But whether bumping or jawing, Childress argues that emotion has been a core ingredient of stock-car racing since the first green flag was thrown.

"It's good for the sport to show the emotions you feel," Childress said. "I think when NASCAR told [drivers] they were going to be a little more lenient, they started doing a little more [bumping]. But NASCAR's not going to let it get out of hand."

Others suspect Busch will learn to reel in his antics because he's losing friends faster than he laps the traffic in his No. 18 Toyota.

Busch hardly is the only NASCAR driver to stir controversy in recent weeks. Denny Hamlin intentionally rammed Brad Keselowski during the Nationwide Series race at Lowe's Motor Speedway in North Carolina on May 24 -- payback for a gentler nudge earlier in the event. Their pit crews tangled afterward. And Hamlin irked even more drivers by arguing that Keselowski, 24, owed him more respect because the 27-year-old Hamlin races in the elite Sprint Cup ranks.

"There are a lot of egos in this sport, and a lot of times those egos are bigger than their brains," racer Clint Bowyer said. "When you get on the racetrack, in my opinion, you have to leave those egos in the motor home. You owe it to your team to be smart. And when your emotions get the best of you, you make bad decisions. I learned that at an early age racing motorcycles: Fits get you nowhere."

NASCAR may be a contact sport, but drivers generally adhere to an unwritten ethic behind the wheel. Among its tenets: Younger drivers respect veterans (that doesn't mean they defer to them, but they rarely provoke them), and drivers battle each other with the same degree of respect, or lack of it, they are shown.

Busch has followed his own ethic since winning rookie of the year honors in 2005, letting nothing get between his car and the front of the field. This season, he has taken particular delight in blowing past his former stablemates at Hendrick Motorsports, the team that fired him last fall to make way for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Last month at Richmond International Raceway, Busch riled legions of Earnhardt Jr. fans by wrecking the sport's most popular driver in the waning laps, saying it was an accident.

Busch was roundly booed during driver introductions the following week at Darlington, where he flashed a middle finger at Hendrick Motorsports crewmen as he exited pit road.

He did the same to four-time series champion Jeff Gordon during the Coca-Cola 600 weeks later, angry that Gordon, whose car wasn't as fast, challenged him for position late in the race rather than letting him zoom past.

"Some of his cockiness shows up from time to time," two-time champion Jimmie Johnson said. "[But] what's sport without trash-talking? What's sport without these little rivalries?"

Still, veteran crew chief Robbie Loomis thinks there's a right way and a wrong way for drivers to vent their frustrations. His boss, seven-time champion Richard Petty, set the standard decades ago, airing his grievances in private rather than lashing out on the track. In his view, drivers such as Gordon and Johnson have followed suit, behaving like "class acts"; others, less so.

"The thing I hate the most is seeing the loss of that level of respect in the garage," Loomis said.

Said Martin, who has mixed feelings about NASCAR's new brashness: "This is a new day and age, and young people don't necessarily conduct themselves quite like the last generation did. I don't see Bobby Labonte or Jeff Burton showing his backside. But kids will be kids."

· NATIONWIDE SERIES: Hamlin made it nine victories for Joe Gibbs Racing this season, leading all but 69 laps to win the Heluva Good 200 at Dover. Rookie phenom and Gibbs teammate Joey Logano, 18, finished sixth in his NASCAR national-level debut.