Kyle Busch = Dead Freaking Wrong

Whether NASCAR fans want to admit it or not, Kyle Busch isn't a terrible waste of a human being. He's one of the first in line to help with fellow drivers' charitable efforts, and he's obviously attractive to sponsors, as he never has any shortage of them in his full-time Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series rides, or his part-time gig in the Camping World Truck Series.

He must have something going that's attractive to sponsors, besides just winning.

(Even before he was a big-time winner on either series, he had no trouble getting sponsors.)

However, attitudinal issues are keeping Busch from becoming a tremendously popular driver. Instead, it seems like he thrives off his "role as a villain". His tendency to behave like a petulant teenager came to the surface again this week, after a dramatic finish to Saturday's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona.

Take a look at the videotape.



Busch did not comment after the race, and wasn't heard from publicly until Thursday, when he spoke to the media in advance of Saturday's Lifelock.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway.

He probably should have kept not talking.

"NASCAR can take steps to look at it," Busch said. "If the second-place driver dumps the leader, then black flag his ass. He doesn't get the win. If he's up alongside the leader and dumps him, give the third-place car the victory."

Busch then was asked if he considered the bump with Stewart "a dump."

"Yes, it would be considered a dump," he said.

This is blasphemous. Busch might as well have blamed Dale Earnhardt, Jr., because he was just as responsible as Stewart was for the wreck. It's not Stewart's fault that Busch was, in the words of TNT's Wally Dallenbach, "mirror driving", meaning he was watching the goings-on behind him instead of just driving the 18.

However, I'm hardly an expert on racing, so let's enlist ESPN.com's Terry Blount to ask a few people who know more about it than I do.

"I would put more blame on the guy leading who was blocking than the guy who was behind," (Jeff) Gordon said. "It's not getting dumped if the guy got a fender inside you and you turn. You've got spotters. If someone is half an inch inside you, you expect to know it because of your spotters."

Kasey Kahne agrees.

"That's a long way from a dump in my mind," Kahne said. "They both were battling for the win. I certainly would not say he got dumped.

"Tony made a great move to get to Kyle's outside. To me it looked like [Stewart] was going to side draft off him to the line, but Kyle turned right.''

On the bright side, Busch is on to something. If a second-place driver purposely dumps the leader off the racetrack, that is indeed a move worthy of a black flag.

Unfortunately for Busch, that's not what happened Saturday.