Busch, Earnhardt won't dwell on altercation

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CONCORD, N.C. -- Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. celebrated Cinco de Mayo Tuesday at Lowe's Motor Speedway with a long, hot day of testing.While Earnhardt was trying to keep his nose to the grindstone, Busch was front-and-center, not dodging the media but stating his case about his tangle with Earnhardt at Richmond on Saturday night and taking all questions.Earnhardt did note that he couldn't do much criticizing of Busch for Saturday night's run-in, while the two were dicing for the lead and the win in the final miles, because he'd knocked Busch out at Kansas City last fall, when Busch was making a strong run at NASCAR's Cup championship. That incident probably cost Busch any shot at the title.So the two spent yesterday trying to put the flap behind them, though Earnhardt will certainly have to answer more questions on Thursday at Darlington Raceway, where new asphalt and 200-plus mph speeds promises to make for an exciting race on Saturday night.Earnhardt and Busch can't afford to let their spat at Richmond carry over, because they're both in contention for this year's championship, which neither has won. Busch leads the Sprint standings; Earnhardt is third, 104 points down."It's great to be back on top of the point standings," Busch said. "We were there earlier this year and fell back. We've had some great runs; we've had some good cars. And we've capitalized most of this year."At Darlington, with the new paving job, hopefully we can have a great run out there to keep our momentum going."Busch didn't dodge the Richmond controversy, when he banged into Earnhardt's door in a side-by-side battle for the lead."Dale and I race each other at the top level of NASCAR, and we know it was a racing incident -- racing hard -- and not really giving each other much room," Busch said."That's a product of Richmond; that's a product of the car of tomorrow and the hard racing it provides for us."Leaving the track Saturday night "wasn't too bad," Busch said. "We were going from the infield to the motor home and there wasn't anything. Then going from the motor home to the helipad, there were just a couple of fans yelling derogatory comments. It's nothing new to me anyway; I'm used to it."I told them 'Grow up. That's racing.' We're racing hard, and there's a lot worse in this world than someone getting spun out in a race."Of course, the late Dale Earnhardt Sr. could have easily related to Busch's situation, because the hard-charging Earnhardt drew more than his share of boos for hard driving in his career."It's been a lot of great race drivers over the years," Busch said. "I don't know about Richard or Lee Petty having it, but I know Dale Earnhardt Sr. was one of those guys, and Rusty Wallace was one of those guys, Darrell Waltrip was one of those guys."To me it's nothing new to this sport. Jeff Gordon is one of those guys who gets booed a lot, and Jimmie Johnson as well."So, any second thoughts, any second-guessing?"Would there have been a chance to do something differently? Yeah, there's plenty of things I could have done differently," Busch said with a grin. "I could be on a beach in South Carolina; I could be on a lake in North Carolina; I could have been home in Las Vegas."We probably could have given each other a little more room. I probably could have dove further to the bottom; Junior probably could have run somewhat similar to the line he had been running on the previous run."But he was trying to find something that would work better for his car so he could get away from me, and we just made contact. Unfortunately, he got the worst brunt of it."I know what my status is in the garage with the drivers. I know what my status is with the fans. Obviously it's a lot worse with the fans than it is in the garage."For me, it was a tough scenario to go through last year (the Kansas run-in with Earnhardt that took Busch out of title contention). I hate it for my guys that I had with me working on the team last year. We were doing so well.... We were running sixth or seventh (at Kansas) when we got wrecked."But that had nothing to do with this past weekend's incident. That was just a product of hard racing on a Saturday night."Last year is last year. That's in the past and behind me. I'm focused more on what's going on this year with my new team. Joe Gibbs signed me on to go out there and win races, and that's what I was trying to do."I hope we can talk about it and put it behind us. I've reached out to Junior. I called him earlier (Monday) morning and got his voice mail. Hopefully we'll either see each other in the garage here or he'll get back to me later ..."Basically we would just talk it over a little and see what his feelings are and what his outlook on the whole deal is."He's grown up knowing one of the best in the sport, and so I'm sure he has a lot of knowledge that he can relay to me, so I would like to listen ...''(Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern(at)wsjournal.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)