Why Drivers Should Wait On Revenge

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Kyle Busch seemingly came out on top of the battle with Brad Keselowski in the late stages of the Food City 250 Friday night when Brad seemingly put him into the wall, and Kyle retaliated by spinning out Brad.

“Seemingly” does not mean “actually.”

What actually happened is that Kyle had not entirely cleared Brad. When Kyle turned up in front of him, the rear of the #18 clipped the nose of the #22 and Kyle got into the wall.

Kyle, however, took it as intentional, not a mistake by Kyle / his spotter, and spun Brad back to 5th. After pitting for tires, Brad finished 14th and lost 34 points to Carl in the driver’s championship and 70 points to Joe Gibb’s #18 in the owner’s championship.

This is why drivers should wait on revenge.

You do it immediately. But you don’t know whether or not for sure that driver did it intentionally. Kyle and Brad’s run-in was a good example.

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Another would be the Edwards vs. Keselowski incident at Gateway. Carl side-drafted Brad, got him loose, and Brad got into Carl. It wasn’t Brad’s fault but Carl thought it was. We all know what happened there…and it cost Carl than he gained – 59 points were gained in the race but 60 were lost in fines. 1 point isn’t much but the point is Carl didn’t gain anything on Brad. He got his revenge but actually lost some doing it.

If he had waited another week, I still think he would’ve tried to retaliate, but I don’t think it would’ve been as dramatic of an incident. If he had time to cool off he wouldn’t have done something as drastic and not been fined as much, maybe even gained something. But because he did it when he was hot he lost points.

Carl had to know when he did it that turning a driver on the last lap would not sit well with NASCAR. But he did it anyway, claiming he couldn’t let Brad “steal” another win. He knew a penalty would most likely be in place but he just wanted revenge, not caring about the costs. He was willing to risk losing more points than he could gain just for revenge. He was willing to risk a championship for revenge. When you’re willing to ruin something of your own, just to ruin something for somebody else, you’re defeating yourself.

I [most likely] have anger management  issues and I’ve had a hard time giving myself time to cool off before trying to get back at someone and it’s definitely helped. Alot of times getting back at someone would hurt myself but I still did it, but after I started trying to cool off I started ignoring stuff like that. It’s just life. With Busch vs. Kes, with Edwards vs. Kes, with countless other incidents, it’s just racing. You accept it and move on. You dwell on it, it gets in your head, you try for revenge, you usually wind up hurting yourself more than the other person.

I think NASCAR drivers should all be required to take anger management classes.