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Welcome to the Cup Scene Daily for
Vol. III,No.VIXII FINAL EDITION
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Quote of the day:
"I've got the fever again now. It's like jungle fever. I've got it bad."
7 DAY ARCHIVE SundayMonday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday INSIDE TODAY'S ISSUE: Stewart surprises everyone at Indy Kahne uses first all-star run to learn NASCAR heads to the Great White North Truex passes Hamilton on last lap for Busch win at Nazareth Schrader thanks the dirt guys Not everyone loves all-star weekend Gordon happy with team effort Junior needs a new suit Fed-Ex coming the Joe Gibbs in 2005 Sunoco may be out: Shell may be in as official fuel Numbers adding up for Kenseth Beyond the track at Speed Channel Shame on You, ESPN and About That Tony Stewart/Darrel Waltrip Thing Cup Scene readers speak out about Talladega
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Happy Birthday: Ricky Craven, Colt Hammond When you have five teams entered into a 43 car race, you increase the odds of having on of your teams come in first. Of course that also means you'll always come home with a least four losers. As Matt Kenseth enjoys his Nextel All-Star Challenge victory from Saturday night, the boss has to worry about a nasty feud between two of his other drivers, Kurt Busch and Greg Biffle. Jack Roush will find himself having to play peacemaker at Roush Racing, instead of just counting all the zeros on that $1 million check from Nextel for Matt Kenseth's win against Ryan Newman in NASCAR's annual spring all-star bash. Roush won't be waiting until his weekly Tuesday meeting to get things straight between all the warring parties: "Typically our races are Sunday, and I'm usually wrought with frustration and sometimes with anger for the things that have gone wrong, and I want to let that rest for at least 24 hours and give myself a chance to put it all in perspective. So I want to let a little space go between now and then. "But in the meantime, I will certainly have a conversation if I can reach Kurt. I'll have a conversation with Greg if I can reach him. I'll talk to Geoff Smith, our president. I'll talk to Harry McMullen, our general manager. "I'll make every effort to have conciliatory discussions that will soothe feelings and get us back on the right track before I get back down here. "But if that doesn't happen, I will make my best effort to effect an understanding that will put us all on the same page so we can come back here for the 600 and have this behind us. "I hope I'll be able to congratulate them on getting their problem solved." Eleven laps into Saturday night's all-star race, Busch and Biffle triggered a wreck that took both of them out and damaged half the cars in the race. Two wrecked cars were bad enough for Roush. But there was also Biffle's blistering criticism of Busch, which played over and over on ESPN's ``SportsCenter'' early Sunday. ``He's an idiot,'' Biffle said. ``He has no brains at all.'' Replays show Busch running into the back of Biffle at the end of the frontstretch. Busch said he was merely trying to give his teammate a helpful bump, an effective technique when executed properly. Biffle wasn't buying. ``We're not teammates,'' Biffle said. ``One of us is going. It's me or him.'' Biffle, a former truck and Busch champion who won last summer at Daytona, has threatened to leave before. He can become a free agent after this year. Some of Biffle's other comments immediately after the wreck also caused some raised eyebrows. He alluded to the fact that Busch was faster because he had a more powerful engine, since Busch is ranked higher in points. In fact, since Ford has a new cylinder head, only a select number of cars are able to use them. Busch did have the newer, supposedly better part, but Roush downplayed that as the cause of the contact. "I just think that Kurt misjudged," Roush said. "This is a fairly fast race track and you do get a bit of a draft. He sucked up into a vacuum there and I think it was much easier for him to get close to him than he figured." That didn't mean much to Biffle, who appeared to have one of the faster cars in the race. "The car was awesome, passing on the outside, going to the front," he said. "I feel bad for Roush. We wrecked the whole field with two of our cars and took a lot of our stuff out of the race. It's senseless to do something like that." The incident wasn't the first time Kurt Busch was embarrassed Saturday, NASCAR president Mike Helton chided him for one of his comments, which drew laughter from his peers in the drivers' meeting. Earlier in the day, at the drivers' meeting, Busch suggested that the mandatory pit window rule in segment one of the Challenge be changed from 35 laps to 30 to allow extra time to pit in case of a caution. "You can make that call on your own," Helton said. "We'll keep it at 35 laps." Everyone in the room burst out in laughter – except for Busch. The second time was a much more public humiliation. Following the wreck Busch was so upset that he had to compose himself in his hauler before making a statement. "He's a teammate of mine and I didn't mean to wreck him," Busch said. "I mean, we're only 12 laps in and I've got a wrecked race car." "I didn't mean to do it, but I wrecked his car, and then everyone else wrecked," Busch said. "I feel sorry for it. It's just bad news. I was going to bide my time and stay away from wrecks, but instead, I caused it."
"I don't know who started the whole deal, but they're an idiot," said Joe Nemechek, whose night was ended in the crash. "It's uncalled for to wreck on the straightaway. We're supposed to be the best of the best – we don't wreck on the straightaway." Robby Gordon's car was also among those taken out by the wreck. "It was pretty disappointing, because this is an all-star race and you'd think we'd act like all-stars," Gordon said. Fox commentator Darrell Waltrip said the incident should never have happened: "I had a feeling about Saturday night, even before the first wreck happened 100 yards past the start/finish line in the Nextel Open. I could just feel it in the air. But getting into Biffle was totally uncalled for, and Busch can say, 'Well, I was bump drafting.' But you don't bump draft at Lowe's Motor Speedway going down into Turn 1. That was not a very wise move. He was trying to knock him in front of Kenseth, their teammate. He knocked him alright, but not in front of him. It never should have happened. Kenseth, who was inside of Biffle when the crash started, never saw what happened, but still defended Busch's maneuver. "I didn't see the accident with Kurt and Greg, but I will say that they are two of the best teammates you could ever have," Kenseth said. "I would bet our paycheck that whatever happened was an accident. "I'm sure they're mad about it, but knowing Kurt, he was probably trying to bump draft Greg to make him go faster. He does that to me all the time." Neither Biffle nor Busch were able to return to the race, because their Fords were severely damaged, and Kenseth and Mark Martin were left to carry the Roush banners. Kenseth came through, smoothly passing Newman with four laps left for his first victory in the special, non-points race. Jeff Burton, the fifth driver for the team, crashed at the green flag in the preliminary Nextel Open and left Roush with three torn up cars. "I was asking myself, 'I wonder what second place pays.' I'm sure my part of second place is not going to pay for all the carnage we had, not to mention the hurt feelings," Roush quipped. ``I am card-carrying crazy,'' Roush said in the wee hours Sunday. "Anybody who would put a half-dozen of these drivers - in fact we've got 10 programs this year with seven drivers - together, people that are competitive and very aggressive, whose careers are developing and unfolding, and have them share space and expect everybody be happy about that all the time is probably too much to ask. Roush will try to diffuse tensions this week, a skill he has had plenty of practice at. Having fielded multiple cars in NASCAR's top division since 1992, he has had to soothe many a bruised ego. ``When I first started my two-car operation in the early '90s with Wally Dallenbach and Mark [Martin], they weren't the happiest with one another, but the performance of the 16 car [Dallenbach] at that time wasn't what the 6 car [Martin] was,'' Roush said. ``Even though they weren't real happy with one another sharing space, they didn't have the prospect of being faced with running over one another. ``It was unfortunate [Saturday night] that the cars were in proximity of one another and they ran into one another, and now we've got to go sort that out.'' And it has to be done quickly. This weekend's Coca-Cola 600 is one of the biggest points races of the year. It's a race Kenseth won as a rookie in 2000 and rates as a more interesting challenge than even Daytona or the Brickyard. ``It's my favorite event of the year by far,'' he said. ``I love that race. I like how you start during the day and the track is real snotty and mean and nasty and slippery, and as you go on at night your car takes such a dramatic change and you just have to stay on top of it.''
Kenseth picked up $1,044,000 Saturday night - a take he, of course, splits with his boss and crew members. He also won for the third time in 2004, following points victories early in the season at Rockingham and Las Vegas. It's adding up to vindication for a driver who got little credit for his one-win championship in 2003. But it isn't surprising. ``It is extra special for us to be able to win this race because of all the [criticism] we heard over and over and over,'' he said. ``This is a wide-open race. You race as hard as you can. We had the fastest pit stop, we had a real fast car, and everybody just did a great job.'' Kenseth envisioned this kind of year back in to the offseason, when he, Roush and crew chief Robbie Reiser considered their prospects for 2004 over dinner in New York. ``We talked about how this year was an opportunity for Roush Racing and ourselves,'' Kenseth said. ``We'd kept our whole team together. We've got better equipment. We've got a new body this year. We've got more people working on the engine program to try to make them better. ``We just felt like this could be a year where we could do things like this - we could win exciting races and we could lead more laps and run more competitively each and every week.'' Maybe it bodes well for Kenseth that eight of the previous 19 winners of the all-star race went on to win the championship. There's but one side for boss Jack Roush: Only one driver gets the trophy. |
