Mike Hembree: Drivers can be jerks
By Mike Hembree
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
COMMENTARY
In case you're wondering why you might not have gotten all the information you wanted about the exploits of Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick during the Bristol weekend, here's why: Drivers can be jerks.
It's almost always possible to measure an athlete's maturity level by how he or she responds to adversity and disappointment. The best ones know how to handle the down times. With rare exceptions, drivers like Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin and the retiring Dale Jarrett deal with trouble by addressing it head-on and taking the time to explain their side of the story to fans through the media.
At Bristol, Busch, Stewart and Harvick displayed the opposite characteristics, those that might be described as coming from the Bobby
Knight-Bill Belichick School of Obnoxious Behavior.
Busch, whose driving this season has been nothing short of spectacular, fell out of Saturday's Nationwide race at Bristol. Upset, he jumped from his car and made a beeline for the pedestrian tunnel leading to the driver motorhome compound. A television reporter followed Busch into the tunnel seeking comment. He got one, but not the sort one could put on the air.
On Sunday, Stewart and Harvick, neither of whom is known to be overly cheery in unpleasant situations, participated in a very unpleasant situation. Wrestling for the win, Harvick slammed Stewart's car in the closing laps, opening the door to Jeff Burton's victory.
After the race, as might be expected, tension was high in the tiny patch of asphalt Bristol Motor Speedway calls a garage area. One of the afternoon's big questions was how Stewart would respond to aggressive contact by Harvick.
Obviously upset, Stewart headed toward his team's hauler. He stopped for less than a minute to answer two quick questions by a Fox Sports reporter. He turned to continue to his hauler, ignoring a print reporter's question as he pushed him aside. Stewart stayed in the hauler for a few minutes then headed for the driver compound, leaving, as he so often has done in times of trouble, other team members to explain.
Meanwhile, Harvick was having a little fun of his own. To his credit, he appeared at the postrace press conference, as is required of
each race's top three finishers (a chore Stewart occasionally ignores). He wasn't in a mood to offer much commentary on the incident with Stewart, however.
In his initial comments, Harvick referred to the accident, saying he lost control and made a mistake. A few minutes later, one of the most respected female reporters on the NASCAR beat asked Harvick about the wreck. He responded: "I already answered that once. I'll answer one more ignorant question. I got down on the apron. I lost the car. I hit the side of Tony. That was pretty much the end of it. If you can't understand that, then I don't know what to tell you."
Harvick has been around the sport long enough to know that a major crash between victory contenders late in a race – particularly at a hothouse track like Bristol – is going to produce numerous questions. Reporters – and fans – want to understand as much as they can about what happened and why, and the best people to answer those questions are those directly involved. It isn't necessarily pleasant, but it's part of the game.
Accepting the accolades of victory is easy. Learning how to lose is hard. Some people are still learning about that.
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