|
 And, it was Kurt's younger brother Kyle Busch who got the
sympathy vote on Sunday after being forced to watch the race while
mending from surgery to a leg broken Saturday in the Xfinity Series
race at Daytona. His team owner Joe Gibbs is already talking about
getting Kyle back into his Toyota as soon as is feasible.
It is likely Kurt Busch will not compete again in a car capable of
winning the Daytona 500.
On Sunday, it was Regan Smith who drove the Stewart-Haas Racing
Chevrolet that Busch had wheeled during Thursday night's 150-mile
qualifying races. No man is an island, but Busch now lives on a very
lonely peninsula after being suspended Friday by NASCAR due to a
family court finding that he "most likely" assaulted his
ex-girlfriend.
He then lost his appeal to NASCAR a day later.
Career-wise, Busch is now a three-time loser in a sport pickled
green by corporate sponsor money. While the future now looks bright
for 24-year-old Logano, whose sponsor Home Depot soured on his
prospects while he was driving for Gibbs, Busch remains on the same
downward path that has been his career trademark.
 Busch won his first - and now likely only - championship at age 26.
But in 2005, one year after winning the first Chase for team owner
Jack Roush, he was fired with two races to go in the season
following an arrest by police in Phoenix resulting from a
confrontation during a traffic stop.
Following an epithet-laced meltdown with a TV reporter in 2012,
Busch lost the plum Penske Racing ride that Logano drove on Sunday
to become the second youngest Daytona 500 winner.
So it's hard to feel sorry for Busch, who has made his own bed with
a persistent pattern of defiant, over-the-top angry behavior toward
team owners, the media, other drivers, and, occasionally, NASCAR
officials.
Busch made a short cut entry into racing's highest rank by scoring
well in one of Roush's "gong show" tryouts, where seat-of-the-pants
ability was all that mattered. He raced five seasons for Roush in
the Cup series before his unceremonious departure. Between the
release by Roush and the firing by Penske, Busch had six years to
get the counseling he needed to operate in the pressure cooker at
the sharp end of professional motor racing. But, his behavior didn't
change and Shell representatives notified team owner Roger Penske
they'd had enough after Busch F-bombed an ESPN reporter several
times while waiting to go on air for a post-race interview.
On the other hand, there was no police report immediately following
an alleged assault last September in Busch's motor home at the track
in Dover as in the incident a decade earlier in Phoenix. There was
no hand-held device and resulting video that went viral as when he
blasted ESPN reporter Jerry Punch.
The evidence boiled down to "she said" and "he said" in front of a
lower echelon family court in Delaware, a place rarely frequented by
major media coverage and high-powered attorneys.
But put Busch in front of even a low level authority figure like a
county commissioner in a court setting and, well, stuff happens. In
this case, he claimed that his ex-girlfriend Pamela Driscoll had
told him of working as an assassin and had used a sniper rifle and
close combat to take out drug lords. In short, he was claiming it
was he who should have been physically afraid of her.
Once he used these comments to state his own innocence, comments
that bore remarkable similarities to previous episodes in terms of
defiance and disrespect, Busch's days were numbered. He lost crucial
credibility with the commissioner running the court, embarrassed the
NASCAR community in general and his Stewart-Haas Racing team.
Driscoll may have made such fanciful claims, but was Busch really
afraid of her?
[to top of second column] |
All this took place in the midst of the NFL's major league
headache over domestic violence and made it seem as if Busch did not
take the issue seriously. Non-racing fans and reporters found his
comments ludicrous or laughable. The NASCAR community could not get
far enough away from Busch and his problems. Once the court's ruling
that Busch "most likely" committed assault, his indefinite
suspension by NASCAR quickly followed as well as a terse
announcement by his team that offered no support for the driver.
In the current modern era, the only domestic problem in NASCAR has
been some drivers sleeping around in the same fashion that happens
in every major league sport as a result of women chasing male stars
with money or male stars looking to "cash in" on fame. Absent that
behavior and the tawdry, sad affair of Busch and Driscoll, NASCAR's
top series gives every appearance of living up to the sport's
family-oriented image.
We haven't seen the last of Kurt Busch as a race car driver.
NASCAR's suspensions have usually provided a path for re-instatement
that includes counseling, although technically Busch has three major
offenses detrimental to the sport, which could put his return in
jeopardy. He was fired twice previously by team owners in lieu of
suspension by NASCAR, but the sanctioning body is not keen on
behavior by drivers that discourages corporate sponsorship. Unlike
the drug abuse program, there are no specific guidelines for
re-instatement following domestic abuse by a NASCAR license holder.
Also, criminal charges may yet be filed by the district attorney.
Whatever his fate in NASCAR, Busch has top drawer talent. This is
the driver who finished 6th in his first Indy 500 last year - and
then raced his Stewart-Haas Chevy in Charlotte for 271 laps before
his engine blew. A car owner will elect to put him behind the wheel
in some form of racing at some stage.
One of the pleasures in motor racing is watching a fast driver fall
to the rear of the field due to circumstances and then work his way
back to the front. (See Jimmie Johnson in Sunday's 500 after he
became the first driver penalized under new pit road safety
procedures.) But there'll be no watching Busch try to recover in the
short term in a sponsorship-driven sport.
For him, going to the back of the pack is now a metaphor for a life
and career gone haywire yet again.
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