NASCAR Cup Series

Busch speaks out against Johnson's tactics

Published Aug. 6, 2010 1:00 a.m. ET

foxsports

Kurt Busch has admirably kept his composure throughout the season.

Under the direction of The Captain, Roger Penske, Busch has tried in earnest to mirror the "Penske way" – restraining himself from on track retaliation and keeping his radio chatter below a mild roar.

On Friday at Watkins Glen International, however, Busch grew tired of being Mr. Nice Guy.

The breaking point migh have come Sunday, when Jimmie Johnson drilled Busch in the closing laps at Pocono Raceway. The incident was the culmination of a series of misdeeds between the two champions starting with another road course — Infineon Raceway — that bled over to Chicagoland Speedway two weeks later.

According to Busch, Johnson's tally stands at 3-0 — in favor of the four-time champ. He offered Busch a mea culpa by phone Sunday night and spoke with the driver the next day.

"It was a racing incident and I hate that over the last year or two there have been a lot of those racing incidents and he has certainly been on the losing end of that situation and it is nothing intentional and nothing I have against him," Johnson said. "He and I joked on the phone Monday that we have these magnets we can't get rid of."

On Friday, Busch had yet to see the sincerity — or the humor in Johnson's apology. While he agreed that the incident at Pocono "wasn't intentional," the recurring theme between the pair makes it difficult to dismiss.

"I asked (Johnson) when I was walking in here ‘Do I need a dust pan and a broom to clean up your mess?' I've been wrecked by (him) quite a bit in ... the last 13 months, whether it was racing or just a small bump that he didn't intend to do what he did," Busch said.

"There might be some of that coming from my side of it. I may not intentionally try to wreck him, but we've got a high car count of wrecked cars over at our shop and those guys on the 48, and even Jeff Gordon, with what he did to us at Sonoma, it's been definitely a one-way street right now."

Johnson insists he'll attempt to avoid Busch in the future, but the hornets' nest has been stirred. With three perfect tracks for Busch to exact his revenge — Watkins Glen, Bristol and Richmond — before the Chase for the Sprint Cup, Johnson could be a marked man.

For now, Busch knows he must concentrate on qualifying for the Chase. After the hit he took at Pocono, Busch dropped from fifth to seventh in the standings, 358-points behind leader Kevin Harvick.

The driver of the Blue Deuce will sacrifice the beauty contests to his Hendrick Motorsports rivals. He just wants to race.

"We're race car drivers," Busch said. "The guys at Hendrick are pretty boys and they get on People Magazine covers and that's their job. My job is to go out and race cars and that's what I focus on. I like to race the cars and race them hard, race them smart and I feel like that if what happened last week, which we'll talk about racing because that's what we should be talking about, if the roles were reversed and the 2 car wrecked the 48, I would have been hung. I would have been lynched at the gates for wrecking a four-time champion. But if the roles really were reversed, I wouldn't have bumped the 48 in that fashion and both of us would have continued on and ended up with good results."