NASCAR had its own clash of the titans at Pocono Raceway as two NASCAR Cup champions battled it out in the closing laps of the Good Sam 500.
Jimmie Johnson powered the No. 48 Chevrolet around Kurt Busch for third place with just a couple laps to go. But after leading 38 laps on Sunday, Busch wasn’t going down in the No. 22 Shell Dodge without a fight.
“I was racing, flat out,” said Busch, who regained third at the finish. “You want to race, let’s race. I didn’t know we were supposed to pull over when it came down to five to go.
“I raced him hard. I raced him smart. I raced him clean and he wants to come over here and bitch about it. Hey, he came off the turn and did at jab to my left; I did a jab back to the right.”
That wasn’t quite the way that Johnson saw the on-track altercation.
“It was a good battle; man, I worked hard to get by him,” said Johnson, who eventually finished fourth. “I got to the outside of him off of (Turn) 2 and I don’t know, he ran over the side of me off of (Turn 2), which I didn’t really understand as I took a lot of patience and gave him a lot of courtesy throughout the course of the day running him down.
“I could have run into him. I could have moved him a lot of different ways to get that position, but I didn’t, you know? I went down there and passed him, and off (Turn 2); he ran me up into the wall, or tried to. And I held my ground so I wouldn’t get smashed in the fence.”
Following the race at Pocono, Johnson approached Busch as he climbed from the car and the pair had an animated discussion. That’s not surprising considering the history between the two Cup champions. Last June at New Hampshire, the pair exchanged bumps and rubs until Johnson sailed away to the win.
But Johnson insists, “I'm not going to run people over to pass them.”
“That's just not me,” Johnson added. “I worked on him for however many laps trying to get by him clean, fair and square and as I got next to him we had that issue off of (Turn) 2. I just keep filing things away. I'll remember this stuff. There's a couple of other guys out there that have been pushing their luck, too."
Kyle Busch, who led 27 laps but lost his battle with Brad Keselowski at the end and finished second, believes that bumping and banging on short tracks is expected but not on a track the size of Pocono Raceway.
“I don’t know what happened,” said Kyle Busch. “But you’d expect it at Martinsville or Bristol or Richmond -- those kinds of places. Not so much at two-and-a-half mile or a mile-and-a-half stuff. We’re going too fast."
Kurt Busch insists he’s been on “the short end of the stick” enough with Johnson.
According to Busch, Sunday’s scuffle “was great racing.”
“What I saw today was good, hard racing, where one guys jukes back at the other, the other guy jukes back and rubs you a little bit, that‘s racing,” Busch said. “That’s what race fans love to see. That’s what they bought this ticket for. That’s what they’re sitting in the grandstands rooting on their favorite driver for is to see him get out there, mix it up clean and bring it home just like we were, third and fourth.
“Why can’t we race each other like this and put on show for the fans and not have a problem with it? I don’t know.”
For Kurt Busch’s effort, he gained two positions in the point standings and moved up fourth.
