Kyle Busch, Looking For a Friend, Crashes Todd Bodine's Victory Lane Party

Todd Bodine won the Built Ford Tough 225 at Kentucky Speedway, then called out Kyle Busch in Victory Lane. Kyle, being Kyle, confronted Todd while he was still celebrating in the Winner's Circle. While this may make for compelling TV, it is at least bad form and at worst downright rude.

Bodine began his victory speech by "thanking" Kyle for spinning him out early in the race, which gave Bodine the opportunity to pit for the fuel he would need to win. Todd Bodine continued to criticize Busch, declaring the move "dirty driving". A look at the video replay showed very little evidence that Busch deliberately spun out Bodine, and he didn't dump him as he did Brad Keselowski in the Nationwide Series race at Bristol.

There is blame to pass around on both sides, first to Todd Bodine for behaving ungraciously as the winner. However, I firmly believe that the race winner should have Victory Lane, and the microphone, to himself to express his feelings on winning a NASCAR Race. Any confrontation, argument, or fistfight should be put off until the winner has done the "hat dance" and celebrated with his crew.

This is not the first time Kyle Busch has behaved badly in Victory Lane, but on the other occasions, he was the race winner, and thus had the right to say or do anything he wanted to. When he won the first race with the Car of Tomorrow at Bristol, he took the time to lambaste NASCAR for designing a race car that he called "junk" and "terrible". After he won the truck race at Nashville, he proceeded to smash the signature Gibson guitar trophy to bits, like some rock star from the seventies. Even last month at Bristol, after he won the Nationwide Series race, he admitted to wrecking Brad Keselowski on purpose.

I would hope that drivers would show some respect to the race winner and let him have his moment of glory without disruption. As for Todd Bodine and Kyle Busch, I am sure that the incident will blow over, if it hasn't already. After all, Speed TV reported that Kyle and Todd would be leaving Kentucky and flying to Atlanta on the same airplane.