NEW YORK — Dale Earnhardt Jr. cruised past Kyle Busch in a crowded hallway, never bothering to glance in the direction of NASCAR’s points leader.
“That’s OK,” Busch smiled. “I’ll win the regular season championship. He can win the souvenir championship.”
Ahhh, the dynamics of “Chase Media Day,” when NASCAR sends the 12 drivers competing for the Sprint Cup title on a whirlwind blitz of New York City mere days before they begin the 10-race championship hunt.
There’s actually not much tension Wednesday, despite the perceived frostiness between Busch and Earnhardt. The two head into the Chase opener this weekend in New Hampshire ranked first and fourth in the standings and fresh off of Sunday’s latest run-in: Earnhardt spun Busch while Busch was leading at Richmond, a reverse of a May dustup at the same site.
The two most certainly aren’t friends — remember, Earnhardt’s signing at Hendrick Motorsports before this season cost Busch his job — but they can be cordial in this setting.
Besides, Earnhardt has bigger issues to deal with right now. Saks Fifth Avenue sent him a new blue Zegna cashmere sweater that all the ladies seemed to love as he wore it from stop to stop. Even talkshow host Kelly Ripa complimented it during a six-driver appearance on “Live with Regis and Kelly.”
It came right before Busch, Earnhardt, Clint Bowyer, Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson tried to break an ice cream tossing world record. Each two-man team had to throw scoops of vanilla ice cream to their partner, who tried to catch them on a cone.
Earnhardt was skeptical of the setup during a practice run in an outdoor garage.
“This ain’t how the Germans did it,” he said of the two men from Germany who own the record, then proceeded to lobs scoops of ice cream at the wall.
Turned out it was harder than it looked. The winning tandem of Busch (no surprise there, Busch wins everything this season) and Hamlin finished with four catches — a mere 21 short of the world record.
The day concludes late Wednesday evening with dinner on the rooftop at Gramercy Park Hotel hosted by NASCAR chairman Brian France. It caps a rare day by a professional sports league that groups all of its championship contenders together for an entire day of camaraderie.
“There’s a lot of things NASCAR has us do that other leagues don’t,” Jeff Burton shrugged.
Unlike other sports, though, these 12 drivers aren’t intense, hated rivals.
It’s just not that way in NASCAR, where the full field travels the country together for a 38-race season. Drivers spend weekends living inches apart in motorhomes, and are often trapped by traffic and rabid race fans who make it difficult for drivers to venture far from the parking lot.
Even so, their schedules are so different, days such as Wednesday in New York provide a rare opportunity to spend time together.
“It’s like a small awards banquet for the guys who made the Chase,” Harvick said. “Very rarely, unless we are all at the race track, do we all have to be in the same place at the same time. So it is nice to have a day like today. You get to know people more in these type of environments.”
But it’s soon on to New Hampshire, where the Chase officially begins Sunday, and friendships must be put on the backburner. It happened last season when teammates Johnson and Jeff Gordon waged a classic battle in their two-man race for the title.
Johnson edged out Gordon, his friend and mentor, for his second consecutive title. Now he’ll go for an historic third-straight championship. When this New York trip ends, everyone will be trying to dethrone him.
“When we all leave here, we know it’s gametime at that point,” Hamlin said. “That’s when the playoffs have started. We’re friends now and will be outside of the race car, but we know when we’re in there we’re going to be digging for every point that we can.
“But I think it’s good to have this prelude to our playoffs.”
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