Who's the Outlaw Now?

Martinsville, is a paper-clip, and has been since 1947, stuff happens. It's Martinsville. Bad Brad and Kurt Busch get together on the first pit stop..........and Brad flips out, deems it "deliberate". Really. Like he's the only race driver, in the world, to be a Martinsville victim. The captain's team spends the next 31 laps taking the damaged front fenders, hood, etc. etc. off so BK can go back out for revenge. Brad and Kurt find themselves on the track, and at the same place again......and BK sure gives it the ol' college try. But, in true Cinderalla fashion, and poetic justice, Kurt wins the race.

Just what in the world is going on here? Brad is already IN the great God-almighty CHASE........Could it be the fact that Kurt, once HIS teammate, and who was fired for "unacceptable" actions/behavior is now a very serious threat? Could Gene Haas, have seen the obvious, at the Captain's expense, and may now reap the benefits? Or could it be a run-of-the-mill temper tantrum of a recent NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion? Maybe it was inspired by that dumb NASCAR "boys have at it" mantra, that was spoken before their brains were engaged. At any rate, the real lucky ones were the other 41 drivers that did not get caught up this emotional melt-down.

Was hard to believe when I saw the trivia last night. Kurt's win yesterday was the first for car number 41 since Curtis Turner won with it at Rockingham in 1965!

I don't know how it is at the track and in the garage in these days of "Chase" racing, but in the "old" days If Brad had torn up the cars of others during his "retaliation" he'd have gotten his bohunkus kicked, on and off the track.

Ironic... just this past Saturday at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, someone speculated a little uniform we saw in a display case might have been the bellhop outfit of Philip Morris Tobacco Company's famed spokeman, "Little Johnny" who is pictured in this pre-Winston photo you've posted in the Winner's Circle with Curtis at Rockingham in 1965. The uniform at the NHOF turned out to be a driver's elementary school band uniform!

I never did see where Kurt did anything wrong. When Brad got jammed on pit road Kurt had to go somewhere and the best place in that pit is to the right. What did Brad expect him to do, sit and wait for it all to take its time and untangle. In my opinion most of the damage to the 2 car was already done before Kurt squeezed him tighter. I have never been a Kurt fan but he handled the after race interview very well even when that idiot interviewer kept goading and asking the same question 3 different ways.

I'm with you, Bill. I kept waiting for a big blow up that never came.

The real culprit at the beautiful Martinsville Speedway is that the back pit road was eliminated and now we have that deal where all the cars are jammed on that single curving pit road where nobody can see.

When there was a front and back pit road at Martinsville, Bristol, Darlington and Rockingham with the field evenly split between the two pits, we didn't have the cluster jams on pit road we have today at Martinsville and Bristol with the long curving pit roads with no visibility.

Here's Martinsville in 1972. Watch the pit stops in the Car & Track Productions film of the Virginia 500 . No big jam ups on pit road like today. Of course, the turns were still asphalt then and NASCAR tolerated a little humor, such as Elmo Langley's pit board: