This past weekend of racing was a full one, featuring the Rolex Sports Car series at The Glen, NHRA drag racing at Englishtown and all three NASCAR series; Sprint Cup and Camping World Trucks at Kansas Speedway and the Nationwide Series at Chicagoland.
For race fans who also like fighting, the truck race was especially entertaining. Because after the checkered flag, after Kyle Busch nudged Joey Coulter's Chevy with his Toyota to show his displeasure in losing fifth place to the rookie on the very last lap, Coulter's team owner found Busch in the garage and shared notice of his own disapproval.
According to published reports -- which is amazingly all we have even in this age of everyone-has-a-cell-phone-that-takes-pics-or-video -- Richard Childress, the 65-year old owner of Coulter's Chevy Silverado found Busch in the garage area and assaulted him. The story goes that Childress removed his watch (to avoid damaging it or Kyle's face?), put Kyle in a headlock with one arm, and smacked him three times in the face with the other before shoving him to the ground.
NASCAR was not amused. They fined Childress $150,000 and put him on probation for the rest of the season.
But for all too many race fans, and even some non-race fans who just like to hear about people who "get what's coming to them" via a good, old fashioned butt-whipping, this event was the highlight of the season.
Just because one human being, Mr. Childress, perceived that he was insulted, disrespected, offended, abused, or whatever, and decided to take action the only way his homo sapien genes would allow at that point in time.
He consciously decided to try and cause bodily harm to the culprit. Call it retribution, call it "teaching the kid a lesson," or call it a loss of control.
Just don't call it civilized behavior or unusual because at this point in our species' evolution we're still a basically uncivilized type of animal that cannot escape our fight or flight tendencies.
This altercation has been brewing awhile. Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick, Childress' No.1 Sprint Cup Series driver, almost got into it a few weeks ago at Darlington, which resulted in fines and probation for both drivers.
The "almost" part of the incident means that when confronted with an unhappy Harvick getting out of his car to put his fist through Busch's window while on pit road, Kyle chose flight instead of fight. Unfortunately he fled by pushing Harvick's driverless Chevy out of the way with his own No. 18 Toyota and into a wall, risking serious injury to those nearby.
For NASCAR, this skirmish is golden. They have to issue fines and penalties, but there's nothing better for ratings and ticket sales than rivalries and fisticuffs among superstars.
Especially when the bout matches an older, established team owner who came up the hard way? long before racing was a slick, polished, multi-billion dollar industry, against a young, rich, has-it-all superstar who many think has never worked a day in his life
As everyone knows, NASCAR found its first toehold of success thanks to a fight between Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison during its first live Daytona 500 broadcast. But fights among race car drivers and crewmen and even owners and sponsors are nothing new.
Fighting is in our DNA. And everybody fights.
Tyra Banks is as famous for assaulting and abusing her domestic help and subordinates as much as she is for being a supermodel. You can find wonderfully entertaining videos of foreign leaders, nay, entire bodies of a foreign country's congress or parliament trying to beat each other up over differences in how to govern. Evel Knievel was as renowned and loved/hated for assaulting those he had a beef with as much as was for being a motorcycle jumping daredevil.
And think how many people in America would love to take a poke at one of the big Wall Street CEOs, a dirty Senator, a health care executive, an oil company exec or some vitriolic talk show host.
Better yet, think of how many people would be satisifed just with the knowledge that one of those bastages had been punched in nose, kicked in the groin or even had a pie thrown in his face?
Let's face it folks, this is who we are. Deal with it.
And to Kyle Busch: It might be time to take some boxing lessons. Round Two will be coming up sooner than you think.
Read more of Bill Tybur at his website: https://fmfl.net
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