Nascar

Epilogue

Heading to Bristol Motor Speedway for the sixth race of the 2002 season, the Food City 500 on Sunday, March 24, Kurt Busch was 11th in the point standings. He had nearly won the race at Atlanta, and he had placed 12th at Rockingham, N.C., a track that had bedeviled him the two occasions that he competed there last year. The new season continued to smile on the sophomore racer.

Still, as he flew into eastern Tennessee on one of Jack Roush's 727 jetliners, Busch was hardly optimistic about his prospects at Bristol. He remembered well his maiden race on the treacherous track the previous March, when he wrecked not once, but twice, and suffered the humiliation of an exit in a tow truck in full view of almost 150,000 spectators and a TV audience of millions.

He remembered the August race at Bristol, when he finished only 25th -- as the chief executive of his primary sponsor, consumer-products giant Newell-Rubbermaid, watched in disappointment from the stands.

Busch was relatively slow in his practice laps on this visit, and his poor qualifying effort was another bad omen. Sunday came and Busch started the Food City 500 in 27th position, well behind pole winner Jeff Gordon, the reigning Cup champion who was seeking his first win of the 2002 season. Gordon, a four-time victor at Bristol, was favored.

Trouble struck early, as it invariably does at Bristol: just five laps into the 500-lap race, Buckshot Jones crashed into the wall, scattering debris and drawing the yellow caution flag.

A quick succession of spinouts claimed several more drivers, but Busch steered clear. By lap 115, he had climbed to 14th, and 50 laps later, he had advanced to 6th.

On lap 343, he reached second.

On lap 414, he took first.

But the driver immediately behind had no intention of leaving him home free. Jimmy Spencer, twice Busch's age and almost 100 pounds heavier, is known for his aggressive and sometimes bullying on-track behavior -- a fact Busch had learned firsthand the previous fall at Phoenix, when the veteran spun the kid sideways, ruining his chance at a top 10 finish at a time Busch sorely needed one.

Spencer himself craved a win at Bristol: in a 13-year Cup career that spanned 376 races, he had won only twice, eight years before. Those numbers did not delight sponsors or satisfy born racers.

Unintimidated, Busch kept Spencer in his rear view for the next several minutes. Then, with 46 laps to go, Spencer muscled Busch aside. The veteran grabbed the lead -- and Busch remembered Phoenix.

One lap later, Busch pulled to within an inch or two of Spencer's rear bumper. Spencer would not budge.

So Busch tapped him with the nose of his No. 97 Ford Taurus. It was a gentle contact, just enough to do the trick: Spencer's car skittered off to the side, like a cat spooked by traffic.

Spencer managed to keep his car off the wall, but in the second or two that it took him to regain control, Busch roared back to first.

The race wound down, and Busch widened his lead.

"He can pedal that bad boy home now," said Fox announcer Darrell Waltrip, a former Cup champion who was one of the few drivers ever to master Bristol Motor Speedway.

"One lap to go, man!" radioed Jimmy Fennig, Busch's new crew chief. "Looking awesome!"

Busch crossed the finish line 1.5 seconds ahead of Spencer, a commanding margin on the half-mile oval.

Busch parked on the frontstretch, removed his helmet and head restraint, and climbed onto the window frame of his car. He raised his arms and bowed to the cheering crowd, a victory ritual at the local Saturday-night races where his talent had first surfaced.

Busch jumped off his car, grabbed the checkered flag, got back behind the wheel, and circled the track with the flag waving. Then he drove to Victory Lane, where he got out and hugged Melissa.

A TV reporter demanded his attention next. "This is unreal!" Busch said. "This is absolutely unbelievable!"

Busch thanked his owner, his crew, and his sponsor, and he answered a question about his tires, which had carried him without mishap so many miles on the unforgiving concrete.

"Goodyear brought some good stuff that just keeps lasting!" Busch said. "Jack brought the engine that keeps lasting!"

Roush found his young driver in the crowd and hugged him, and later, the two faced reporters at the post-race media conference. Journalists compared Busch to Dale Earnhardt, one of a handful of drivers who had won their first Cup race on this merciless track. And writers compared Busch to Jeff Gordon.

Busch was the youngest driver to win a Cup race since the current champion won (at Charlotte) in 1994 at age 22.

Speaking to the reporters, Roush allowed an uncharacteristic glimpse into his soul. He said he accepted much of the blame for Roush Racing's lackluster 2001 season, and he revealed that his disappointment had been so severe that he had questioned whether his organization had grown too big to do justice to each of his four Cup drivers.

"Last year was our 15th year and I was so blue and so brokenhearted I almost cried at the banquet," Roush said. "I'm relieved that the process that we have and our structure and our morals and all the things that wind up holding our world together are working this year and I don't have to retire. I can keep doing this a while!"

In his post-race remarks, Spencer threatened revenge for Busch's tap, but Busch was neither contrite nor cowed. "Last year at Phoenix, he dumped us flat," Busch said. "This was racing at Bristol today. We ended up bumping him a little bit, just to rattle his cage."

But Busch did not dwell on his rivalry or the fact that standing up to the wily old veteran signaled passage into a new phase of his fledgling career, one in which he might someday be a Winston Cup champ.

The ecstasy of winning at speed, which he had not experienced since the fall of 2000, before becoming a Cup racer, overwhelmed him

. "It's just an awesome feeling, to come together and to win at Bristol, to have 150,000 fans screaming around you," Busch told the reporters. "It's the best feeling in the world."