Motorsports

Teamwork doesn't always work

All for one meant little, at least to some teams, in Saturday's Pepsi 400.

By BRANT JAMES
Published July 9, 2007

DAYTONA BEACH - Racing is predisposed to individual selfishness. It is, after all, one against all the rest. One winner. It's a team sport only in the sense that a battalion prepares and supports a car that one person can use to capture a checkered flag. Driver teammates can help, certainly, but they often try to serve the team by humoring the basic desire to serve themselves.

Such was the case - make that cases - Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway when two megateams and several stars turned the Pespi 400 into a dysfunctional family picnic.

Case 1: Kyle Busch vs. Hendrick Motorsports

Busch will be released from his contract with NASCAR's most successful team at the end of the year to make room for the sport's most popular driver - Dale Earnhardt Jr. Whether Busch wanted out or was ousted is debatable. His feelings were not Saturday, when he accused teammates - at least for another 18 races - of hanging him out to dry as he tried to chase down Jamie McMurray on the final lap.

Busch on his frustrations during the race: "I hadn't been getting much help from them all day. We worked together, we got in a line, we ran around the racetrack and then things started getting crazy and they went their way and I went my way. ... More times than not Jeff (Gordon) had the philosophy that if I can help you and I can help the both of us progress, I'll do it, but otherwise you're on your own. So I just was on my own all day."

On the aftermath, when Roush Racing's Carl Edwards pushed teammate McMurray to the front while Busch had to rely on help from his brother, Kurt to finish second: "Walking down pit road saying congratulations to (teammate) Jeff Gordon, I got blown off, so I guess I'm the outsider looking in now and I'm probably not going to be invited into the team meetings next week, so I think bliss is over at Hendrick Motorsports for Kyle Busch. We'll get ready for 2008."

Case 2: Tony Stewart vs. Denny Hamlin

Stewart ran his second-place car into the back of front-running Hamlin's on Lap 14, crashing and effectively ruining both strong race cars.

Stewart, on a testy weekend: "He just wrecked two really good race cars. He tried to wreck us in practice on Friday and didn't get it done. At least he finished it off today. He's a young guy and he wants to be successful, but I don't know if he knows what the definition of team is right now."

Hamlin, responding to Stewart's initial claims that he had braked coming out of Turn 4, causing the accident: "I hope he don't try to blame it on me. I was holding it wide open every single lap. ... If he wants to blame it on me, I'll be the bigger man and take responsibility for it. He's been around this sport longer than I have and he probably knows more than I do, so I'll just take it for what it's worth."

Stewart finished 38th, Hamlin 43rd.

There were more gripes, too. Kyle Busch on Stewart lambasting Hamlin for braking: "Normally the leader is wide open. I was wide open when Stewart ran over me in the Bud Shootout earlier this year, too."

Team owner Jack Roush, citing the "driver code" that dictates on-track conduct between teammates to criticize Kurt Busch, who won a championship for Roush in 2004 but left on bad terms in 2005: "Mark Martin had a great code and I think everybody that's been a part of our organization has benefited from the standards that he set, which were very high. A driver can be a problem for his teammate or a problem for NASCAR or a problem for me, but he won't stay long."

[Last modified July 8, 2007, 23:12:07]