Thu, Mar 30, 2006 page20

• Drivers clash on and off the track

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  Matt Kenseth was mad at Kurt Busch and mildly perturbed with Dale Jarrett. Jeff Gordon was furious enough with Kenseth to deliver a postrace two-armed shove in the chest. Martin Truex Jr. apparently was not thrilled with Gordon, and Tony Stewart was clearly annoyed with Truex. And, by the way, Kevin Harvick still hates Busch.

  That was the scorecard from Sunday's Bristol Motor Speedway road-rage special, better known as the Nextel Cup's Food City 500.

  Bristol's tiny half-mile oval always seems to inspire temper tantrums among NASCAR drivers, and Sunday's bump-a-thon, which had 18 cautions for 104 of the 500 laps, was not unprecedented. Nor were the emotions that followed. After all, NASCAR sets itself apart from open-wheel racing by embracing hard contact between cars.

  

  Dave Blaney, front, Clint Bowyer, right, David Stremme, second from back, and Brian Vickers crash during the NASCAR Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee, on Sunday. Kurt Busch won the Nextel Cup event.

  PHOTO: AP

  The problem in NASCAR is that the rules of etiquette on the racetrack remain largely unwritten.

  "Not all of our debutantes went to the same school, either," Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president for competition, said in a telephone interview Monday.

  Pemberton said Busch did not break any rules when he used his front bumper to ram Kenseth's racecar and push it aside with a little less than five laps to go. The bump slowed Kenseth momentarily while he regained control of his wiggling racecar, allowing Busch to drive past Kenseth and into first place.

  "If we're leading and he's running second and he bumps me out of the way, I'd understand," Busch said of Kenseth after the race. "That's what goes on, man. This racing is awesome. Fans dig it. That's the big thing about Bristol, you have to come to race hard. You have to be able to hoist up the trophy at the end of the day without any grudges."

  Only the victor gets to say that after a Bristol race, though. In addition to being angry with Busch, Kenseth bemoaned the fact that Jarrett got in his way on the closing laps, slowing Kenseth enough to allow Busch to catch up.

  Kenseth said Jarrett should have moved out of the way. But Kenseth refused to use his front bumper to make Jarrett move out of the way.

  Kenseth played the morality card after the race, asking the rhetorical question "What would Mark Martin do?" The veteran Martin is known for clean driving.

  "If Mark Martin would have done that, then that was probably a fair move," Kenseth said. "That's kind of the way I look at it. Everybody is different. There are some people that would do that, and then there are some people that wouldn't."

  After he was bumped by Busch, Kenseth bumped Gordon's car on the last lap, sending Gordon into a slide down the backstretch just as Busch was taking the checkered flag. The slide dropped Gordon to 21st from third, which is why Gordon shoved Kenseth after the race.

  Pemberton said Kenseth apologized to Gordon after the race. NASCAR officials were expected to announce on Tuesday whether Gordon will be punished.

  Last August, Jarrett was penalized at Bristol for intentionally crashing into Ryan Newman. But there were no penalties for rough driving assessed during Sunday's race.

  Series officials also let slide bumps by Gordon and Stewart on Truex' car.

  "We are running for a top-five finish there at the end, and he is holding both of us up," Stewart said. "It is part of Bristol racing. I mean, it is just part of what goes around."

  And that was the consensus of many after Sunday's race, including Harvick, who finished second to Busch a few days after berating him. The two have feuded for years. Even so, Harvick said he had no problem with the move Busch made on Kenseth that won the race.

  "A couple more laps, I probably would have done the same thing," Harvick said. "Just good short-track racing, and one guy wins and one guys loses. So it ends up with one guy happy and then one guy mad."
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