NASCAR Nothing to come easy for Busch

He was booed heartily in Victory Lane Saturday night.
By DAVID POOLE
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Kurt Busch has won seven of the past 29 Winston Cup races, yet his car owner says the 25-year-old driver is learning something new every day.
"Kurt has learned things in the past three years that he didn't know, and things he didn't know he needed to know," Jack Roush said Saturday night after Busch capped off a trying week with a victory in the Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway. "He's becoming wiser every day, and we're just working our way through it."
While Busch's lessons are coming hard in the wake of his altercation with Jimmy Spencer after the previous weekend's race at Michigan, Victory Lane certainly is the best place to be to hear fans boo you.
"Fans have their opinion and they're entitled to that," Busch after winning for the fourth time in 2003. "That's what makes this sport go around.
"It's so challenging to try to put all of that behind you, but that's what I am paid to do and that's what I love to do -- go out and race these cars and focus lap after lap on what I have to do. The rest of it comes with it, so we have to embrace it with dignity and pride."
Some would argue Busch has struggled with that last part since Spencer punched him, which led to a one-race suspension that Spencer served this past weekend. Busch still insistently calls the incident "an assault" despite mounting evidence his own words and deeds did, at best, nothing to defuse the situation.
Made another enemy
Sterling Marlin, for example, had reason to be displeased Saturday after Busch hit Marlin's Dodge in the rear end and spun Marlin out as the two raced for second place on Lap 372.
"I got run over by Kurt Busch," Marlin said. "It was a bone-headed move. I guess Spencer didn't hit him hard enough."
Busch apologized for hitting Marlin's car.
"I didn't want to have anything happen tonight that would be anything toward the negative," said Busch, who'd also performed a classic Bristol bump-and-run on Casey Mears to take third a few laps before getting to Marlin. "I think he was trying to let me go in Turn 1. I was trying to set Sterling up and get underneath him in Turn 2, so I looked too far ahead and accidentally ran into him."
NASCAR told Busch's team that he'd be penalized if cars in front of him were involved in any more incidents the rest of the way. When it came time for Busch to pass Kevin Harvick to take the lead on Lap 380, though, the pass was clean.
"The only thing I saw was a little blood dripping out of his nose as he went by," Harvick said in reference to Spencer's punch at Michigan. "It was perfectly clean. My car just wouldn't get going on the restarts and his car was really good on them."
Banging and bumping
There certainly were plenty of restarts to go around. The race featured 20 cautions, tying the Winston Cup record that had been set here in April 1989 and tied in April 1997. Of the 43 cars that started the race, only 10 were not listed as being part of at least one incident on the race rundown supplied by NASCAR -- and at least two of those that weren't listed should have been.
Busch led the final 121 laps en route to his second Bristol victory this season and his third win in the past four races at the .533-mile track that, ironically, roots its popularity in the aggressive style of racing style for which he is becoming notorious.
Nothing will come easily for Busch for a while.
When Spencer returns to the track this weekend at Darlington, he'll quite likely have some choice words to say about Busch, who said during the prerace show on TNT Saturday night that he "doesn't respect Spencer."
And based on comments made by several other drivers over the weekend, and on the cascade of boos from fans for him in both prerace and Victory Lane ceremonies Saturday, Busch has more than just Spencer to worry about.
"There's still some repair work to be done," Busch said of his relationships within the sport. "But it's very satisfying to put a lot of this behind us and to move forward.
"The whole team stood up this weekend and carried me. When it kept getting worse and worse, they kept giving me more support. They made the light at the end of the tunnel a bit brighter so I could see through this."