Wow! What a return for NASCAR! If you haven’t heard, NASCAR racing came back a little over a week ago at Darlington Raceway.
Two NASCAR Cup Series races were completed there, along with one NASCAR Xfinity Series Race.
All three were special races to me as a fan. It felt good to have racing back after a long break. Even though things in our world are not back to normal yet, this brought a little bit of normalcy back to my life.
The crazy thing? NASCAR coming back would have been plenty for me. But these races were far from ordinary. They were so exciting! We even had some fireworks last Wednesday, as Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott had an incident together near the end of the race.
Busch is the most polarizing driver in the sport. Elliott is the most popular. So naturally, this caused an uproar in the racing world.
As the week went on though, the two drivers seemed to work things out. Busch even said he gave some encouraging words to Elliott after the young driver came up short to winning the Coca-Cola 600 on Sunday.
Last night…another development happened between the two drivers. Back before the season’s postponement, driver Kevin Harvick put up a $50,000 bounty to any NASCAR Cup Series driver who could enter a race in the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series and beat Kyle Busch.
Elliott accepted Harvick’s challenge and was set to race in the truck series at Atlanta Motor Speedway back in March. But because of the schedule being changed, Elliott entered the truck race last night at Charlotte. And he won!
Elliott even did an impersonation of Kyle Busch’s famous bow after the race was done!
So where does this put the rivalry between the two drivers now? Busch really wanted to win that truck race. But, Elliott swooped in and took it. I’m sure that lit a fire under Busch for future races. And I can’t help but think Elliott didn’t enjoy beating him this time a little more than he normally would.
I feel that even after the truck race, Elliott and Busch will still be on good terms, even though emotions were flaring right after the event.
BUT…I do think this still sets an interesting precedent for the future. I believe the two drivers will race each other with the rivalry in the back of their minds. And the fans are not going to let this story line go away. An asterisk will hover beside these two for the foreseeable future.
In fact, if Busch and Elliott cross paths again in an incident, this rivalry is going to escalate even further because of the previous events.
Is it bad that part of me wants something like that to happen? Wait, don’t listen to that part of me! That’s the evil NASCAR fan in me! The one that likes trashy reality TV!
This rivalry has been fun to watch. The messy situation at Darlington, and the truck race at Charlotte are already cemented in NASCAR fans’ minds as classic moments. I for one can’t wait to see what happens next!
