Who’s the real crazy old man?

By Mike Harper

So this is what the view looks like from Turn 3. Nice!

It’s been a week of hard work and I’m just catching up on email and finishing up on reading the week’s columns. Normally I don’t miss too much in the news, but it seems one very hot topic slipped past my eyes. Well, until today.

Rusty Wallace retired from racing at the end of last season. This season he’s been focused on his career at ABC/ESPN covering the IRL and building a Busch Series team. Even though he no longer competes in NASCAR, from what I read in his column "Rusty Nails It," he obviously remains outspoken about the sport he loves.

At the beginning of the season, if you were to listen to Kurt Busch the driver who replaced Wallace in the No. 2 Dodge for Penske Racing, you would think Wallace and the Busch family were close. For a short time there some thought Wallace and Kurt Busch could been best friends. But based on Wallace’s comments in his column, I get the impression that Wallace would rather have dinner with Ryan Newman than a Busch.

I say this because when you are close to someone, you are careful about what you say about him or her or their immediate family. This was not the case with Wallace and his comments about Kurt Busch’s brother Kyle.

Last weekend at Charlotte, Kyle was accidentally bumped by Casey Mears and crashed. Kyle’s temper got the best of him when he got out of his car and threw a piece of his equipment at Mears’ car.

If you’re like me you found humor in Busch’s actions. I knew at the time that Busch would get an invite to the NASCAR hauler for a verbal slashing and later in the week get hit with a penalty and fine. This all happened.

Wallace on the other hand took it to the next step. In his column he said Kyle Busch is a hothead and somebody needs to kick his rear. Yep, I’m being polite in repeating his comments.

In addition, Wallace put himself in Mears’ shoes and said, "If I had been there I'd have stopped, backed up and got out of the car, and smacked Busch's face off. Then I would have gotten back in the car and took off."

Unreal, my gut still hurts!

This sounds like the Rusty Wallace of old and he should give us all one heck of a ride next season when his network takes over.