Kyle Busch gets a lot of criticism for the way he handles bad situations and even situations many people wouldn't consider so bad, such as finishing second. Sunday's race at Phoenix appeared to set the stage for another 'bad Kyle' moment after he had a run-in with Carl Edwards on the track and lost his lead late in the race to eventual winner Jeff Gordon.
But tracked down post-race on pit road by Fox, Busch offered the following response to a question asking about the incident between himself and Edwards:
“It was a real big mistake on my part and the first person I have to apologize to is Carl Edwards, obviously for what happened there on the backstretch. It just got out from underneath me and we were getting bounced around like a ping pong ball there for a while. I got into him and just killed his day. I know he was frustrated and I could tell out there on the race track. I apologize, I don’t know how many times. It was unintentional, especially for the way we raced yesterday -- it was so good to race that way and put on a good show for the race fans. To have that happen, I know they had a good race car. All that aside, I can’t thank these guys enough for this Combos Camry. They did a great job this weekend bringing up a great race car off the truck. We had a fun time today. We came through a lot of adversity. We worked real hard, Dave (Rogers, crew chief) and the guys never gave up. The pit stops were good all day. We kept battling through everything that was thrown at us. There at the end, Jeff (Gordon) just had a better car than us. I thought when I got out to a big enough lead, I thought I was going to hold him off this far and he just ran me down and flat out passed me. He was really, really fast and we couldn’t hold him back. It’s good to see those guys in victory lane. Those are my old 5 guys. That’s cool if anything is good about today.”
Say what you want, that was a comprehensive, rationale and level-headed response from Busch addressing just about everything (even what was not initially asked).
This is what fans and media would like to see more often from Busch. No one expects anyone who loses to be happy. They would appreciate, however, the opportunity to hear Busch's side of the story. Most times he is not required to do so.
Making the effort, however, does leave a more positive, lasting impression on everyone.
