Notebook: Dust-ups catch Johnson's attention

Notebook: Dust-ups catch Johnson's attention

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

(May 14, 2011)

DOVER, Del.—Five–time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson says it's too early to factor the feud between Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch into the title equation this year.

But Johnson certainly was paying attention when Harvick and Busch's teammate, Denny Hamlin, traded shots with their racecars in practice before last year's Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Dover International Speedway in September.

"I remember being here in the Chase and watching the No. 11 (Hamlin) and the No. 29 (Harvick) going at it," said Johnson, who will start from the pole in Sunday's FedEx 400 as the fastest driver in practice, after rain washed out Saturday's time trials. "But now, the championship implications haven't crossed my mind because it's so far from now. … So I haven't thought of it in that perspective."

Johnson enjoyed following the discussion of the Harvick-Busch incident at Darlington , which included a confrontation on pit road. After Harvick climbed from his car and attempted to punch Busch through the driver's-side window, Busch pushed Harvick's car out of the way and into the pit road wall.

"It was exciting seeing discussions about it in major newspapers and the social media world; it's been everywhere," Johnson said. "You hate to see somebody potentially injured, and the stuff on pit road is really the sore spot of all of it.

"But it was exciting. It gave us all a lot to talk about. If something like that happens in the Chase, it certainly will affect those two drivers there, but we're too far away from it now."

Busch hopeful he can rebound

Kyle Busch had reason to celebrate on Friday, having won the Lucas Oil 200 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Dover International Speedway.

Busch also had reason to be concerned, after a blown engine in Sprint Cup practice, followed by a collision with the Turn 2 wall, dampened his winning prospects for Sunday's FedEx 400. Busch is the defending champion of the spring race at Dover .

The engine failure was the sixth this year on the Cup side in the Joe Gibbs Racing camp, and because the team changed motors, Busch will have to start from the rear of the field in Sunday's race.

"When they checked valve lash (the clearance between the rocker arm and the tip of the valve stem), whatever they used to keep the valve lash correct broke, fell out, so that was the problem there," Busch told Sporting News after the truck race. "I don't know if we've seen that issue—I'm not entirely sure—but we had to change engines and go to the backup engine."

The issue was compounded when Busch tried to muscle a tight-handling car around the Monster Mile in final practice, after the engine change. The right side of the No. 18 Toyota slapped the wall 16 laps into the session, and Busch lost valuable practice time as his crew repaired the car.

"I flat-sided it off Turn 2—my fault—just trying to work through practice with a really tight car," Busch explained. "We tried to make some gains on it, and it seemed like we would make some gains on it every time I would go back out on the racetrack for the first two or three laps, but then it would get tight again, and I would keep trying to keep the lap times in the car, running whatever we were running—23.60s or something like that.

"When you push too hard, sometimes you run out of room, and I ran out of room off (Turn) 2. I believe they'll be able to get it fixed. I believe they'll get it back to where they need to and throw something in it that we ran well with last year and just let her eat."

Guitar trophy tops $20,000

Thanks to Carl Edwards' generosity and some spirited bidding among collectors, the family of Jonathan Bunting will have substantial help after the death of the Roush Fenway Racing employee in a car accident.

Edwards decided to auction the guitar trophy he won earlier this season at Nashville to help raise money for the Bunting family. When the auction closed last Sunday, a bidder from Sedalia , Mo. —70 miles from Edwards' hometown of Columbia —won the Sam Bass-painted guitar and an accompanying sketch by Bass for $20,400, all of which will go to help the Bunting family.

"Jonathan was a hard working young man with a young family and all of us together are going to use the money we raised to help out his family … his wife and two young children," Edwards said.