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HardScrabble
Guest
KURT BUSCH --97-- Rubbermaid Taurus (Finished 41st) -- YOU HIT THE SAFER BARRIER. "It seems that it did its job and I'm able to walk away from a 200 mile an hour hit." DO YOU THINK SPENCER DID THAT ON PURPOSE? "Yeah, it was a tough way to go. I shouldn't have been back there in the first place. We should have just qualified steadily up front and that wouldn't have put us with that decrepit old has-been." DOES IT BLOW YOU AWAY THAT HE WOULD DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT? "No, I'm not. It's completely expected from Jimmy." WERE YOU CONCERNED WHEN YOU WALKED BACK ON THE TRACK AND GESTURED TO HIM? "No. I'm in complete control of my actions. I don't believe Jimmy is." A FRUSTRATING WEEKEND? "It's all right. We'll bounce back. We moved ourselves up to fifth in points and we'll probably drop to 10th after this. Jimmy Spencer doesn't know the first thing about points racing, so there's nothing to be concerned about. We'll be all right." ANOTHER CHAPTER IN THE SPENCER BATTLE? "Really, he's so hard-headed. Unlike the soft-wall that I hit, there's nothing you can really say or do about his type of thinking. It's pretty bad when he goes and calls out that he's gonna smash back and then does it at a 200 mile an hour race track, when there is a lot of points and a lot of money at stake. If that's the option he wanted to take, then so be it. I mean, we're race car drivers out here -- all except for the 41 car and I feel real bad for Chip Ganassi." WHY WERE YOU CALLED INTO THE NASCAR HAULER? "I'm called into the hauler because there's probably gonna be a discussion between the 41 car and the 97 car and we're gonna discuss what needs to happen. They think that there's an issue here. I didn't think there was much of an issue after Bristol. You can ask every race fan out there and every official out there and every crew guy and every anybody that has to do anything with racing, and see that there wasn't an issue with Bristol -- except for Jimmy Spencer's mind because he's got the brain of a peanut." WHAT DID YOU SEE AS FAR AS THE INCIDENT GOES? "I shouldn't have cleared him getting into turn three, that was the issue. Obviously, we're coming up through the pack and he's going backwards. That's what old decrepit has-beens do like Jimmy Spencer is and it's unfortunate that we cleared him getting into turn three, which made us vulnerable and he dumped us." WHAT MESSAGE WERE YOU SENDING ON THE TRACK? "I wanted to see him black-flagged. I pointed to my butt and wanted him sent to the rear. That's what they do in Saturday night short-track racing."