Kyle Busch to Face More Penalties From JGR at BetLM

By JENNA FRYER Auto Rac­ing Writer

AVONDALE, Ariz. – Kyle Busch, con­trite and remorse­ful, promised Fri­day to change his behav­ior and con­duct him­self in a way that will restore the respect he lost with his road rage inci­dent at Texas.

It’s a long way back for Busch, and he’ll be on a very short leash.

Busch has been warned by M&M’s that the pri­mary spon­sor will not tol­er­ate any more inci­dents by him, and team owner Joe Gibbs said the dri­ver is still fac­ing fur­ther pun­ish­ment for wreck­ing Ron Hor­na­day Jr. under cau­tion in last week’s Truck Series race. NASCAR sus­pended Busch from all on-track activ­ity at Texas, fined him $ 50,000 and placed the dri­ver on pro­ba­tion through the end of the year.

It led to a fran­tic week of behind-the-scenes nego­ti­a­tions with Joe Gibbs Rac­ing and spon­sors who viewed Busch’s lat­est inci­dent as the final straw for the polar­iz­ing driver.

Fir­ing him was not an option, Gibbs said.

“In a sit­u­a­tion like this you can make one or two deci­sions. One would have been dev­as­tat­ing and really dis­cour­ag­ing for every­one around him and for the sport,” Gibbs said. “What I’ve cho­sen to do, I want to sup­port Kyle, and feel as if this could have a pos­i­tive impact on Kyle and I am com­mit­ted to him as a per­son. I like him. We’ve gone through a lot together. We’re look­ing for­ward to a long relationship.”

Busch was thank­ful for the sup­port dur­ing what he called “a try­ing week” and admit­ted he wor­ried he might be fired for the sec­ond time in his career. Busch was let go from Hen­drick Motor­sports at the end of the 2007 sea­son when the team made room for Dale Earn­hardt Jr.

“I’m apolo­getic for every­one hav­ing to go through this sit­u­a­tion. There’s no one to blame but myself. Joe has been a huge sup­porter of me and can’t say enough about him,” Busch said.

“Was there a point in which I thought, ‘Do I have a ride?’ Of course there was. I thought that (it might hap­pen). Was there a point in which Joe ever told me that, ‘Hey, we’re look­ing at ter­mi­nat­ing this?’ No.”

But there had to be a point Busch was wor­ried the deci­sion could be out of Gibbs’ hands.

The fall­out from Busch los­ing his tem­per at Texas stretched deep into the spon­sor­ship side of NASCAR, where every team is heav­ily depen­dent on fund­ing from out­side busi­nesses. Although M&M’s par­ent com­pany Mars Inc. has a con­tract with JGR, com­pany offi­cials wran­gled with JGR all week over whether they wanted Busch to rep­re­sent the brand anymore.

Gibbs admit­ted Fri­day the team was in limbo most of the week, unsure if NASCAR would sus­pend Busch longer and if M&M’s would refuse to allow him in the car.

Ulti­mately, M&M’s did with­drawal from the final two races of the year, but Gibbs put long­time part­ner Inter­state Bat­ter­ies on the No. 18 Toy­ota. Gibbs would not dis­cuss whether the team had to refund money to Mars, if Busch will col­lect salary these final two weeks, or if Inter­state Bat­ter­ies had to pay to get on the car.

But Inter­state chair­man Norm Miller said his 20-year rela­tion­ship with Gibbs – his com­pany was JGR’s first spon­sor – was the pri­mary rea­son he stepped up for Busch. Inter­state spon­sored Busch in seven races this year in NASCAR’s top three series.

“We feel NASCAR took the appro­pri­ate action with Kyle, and we think he will become a bet­ter per­son for it,” Miller said in a state­ment. “We also under­stand and honor Mars’ rea­sons for step­ping back for these last two weeks of the sea­son. As found­ing spon­sor of Joe Gibbs Rac­ing, we felt it was the right thing to do to sup­port JGR, Kyle and the No. 18 team dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.”

Interstate’s affil­i­a­tion will undoubt­edly bring atten­tion to the com­pany the last two weeks as Busch is one of the most rec­og­nized dri­vers in NASCAR and brings his spon­sors a ton of expo­sure. Accord­ing to Joyce Julius and Asso­ciates, Busch ranked first among all Sprint Cup dri­vers in men­tions (4,991) and inter­view time (1 hour, 1 minute) through the first 32 races of the sea­son. He ranked third in num­ber of inter­views (49).

With 104 vic­to­ries in the top three series, Busch is one of the most suc­cess­ful dri­vers in NASCAR and opened the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup cham­pi­onship tied with Kevin Har­vick as the top seed. But he stum­bled through the first few races, never chal­lenged for the title, and his sus­pen­sion last week­end dropped him from sev­enth to 11th in points.

“That’s a huge deal,” Gibbs said. “I know Kyle and all of us were excited about get­ting back in the top five and this will prob­a­bly take that away from us and we under­stand that.”

At last year’s season-ending awards ban­quet, the mon­e­tary dif­fer­ence between the sev­enth and 11th-place dri­ver was $ 393,982.

And, Gibbs promised addi­tional penal­ties would be levied against Busch.

“We also have other actions that are going to be in place,” Gibbs said. “There will be other finan­cial penal­ties and stuff that we’re work­ing through and we’ll con­tinue to do that as we go for­ward through this process.”

Busch’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Nation­wide and Trucks Series also could be in jeop­ardy. He’s been swapped for team­mate Denny Ham­lin in next week’s Nation­wide finale, and his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Truck race has not been announced. He dri­ves a truck for Kyle Busch Motor­sports, and Har­vick said Fri­day he under­stood the seat has been offered to Hor­na­day for next season.

Hor­na­day said he has talked to Busch about the ride.

Busch, clearly relieved to be back at the track, acknowl­edged he’s got a lot of work to do going forward.

“I’m sure I lost respect with my team, my spon­sors, my peers, and I under­stand those con­se­quences,” he said. “I under­stand my actions were uncalled for and dis­re­spect­ful. I’m here to make sure I can con­tinue in a pos­i­tive man­ner and make sure every­one believes in me from this week forward.

“I want to be with Joe Gibbs Rac­ing, I want to be in NASCAR, I want to be dri­ving the M&M’s Toy­ota. For all of that to work out and to work together, cer­tainly it’s going to be through a lot of my efforts and my efforts behaviorally.”