Garage split on severity of Busch's fine, deduction

LONG POND, Pa. -- The feeling in the garage area at Pocono Raceway on Friday was that even though the penalties assessed to Kurt Busch were substantial, they could have been much worse.

Greg Zipadelli, crew chief of Tony Stewart's No. 20 Chevrolet, and responsible for the safety of his crew, repeatedly used the word "unacceptable" when discussing Busch's actions at Dover.

"The bottom line: Everybody's got emotions but you have to control that," Zipadelli said. "What he did on pit road, that was unacceptable.

Busch penalized

Kurt Busch was penalized 100 points and fined $100,000 for his Dover actions on pit road.

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"I like Kurt, I respect him as a driver. But to put other people at risk on pit road is unacceptable."

Zipadelli said he hopes the penalties will hopefully make Busch think twice before doing something similar again.

"In this instance, nothing happened," Zipadelli said. "But you need to look at it and learn from it.

"At Dover, those are small pit boxes. But I don't remember anybody getting hurt there because the drivers have respect for others on pit road."

Jimmie Johnson said the penalties show that NASCAR has drawn a line in the sand when it comes to dangerous driving on pit road.

"I knew it was going to be big and I still haven't seen the footage to know how close he was to any one of the team members," Johnson said. "That's a huge fine and I knew it was going to be something big. Playing in that department or area, I kind of expected a suspension but now there's kind of a baseline there and I'm sure it will only get worse from there.

"I'm not trying to go after Kurt and say that there needs to be a suspension but that's a major thing, especially if you're endangering people on pit road. I'm sure it's something he feels bad about. His frustration just got hold of him and put him in a position to do that. You can't mess around with guys on pit road. You can't hurt innocent people."

Matt Kenseth agreed with that opinion.

"Obviously, you knew the penalty was going to be fairly big," Kenseth said. "We all have short tempers at times, we all get mad about things at times, but you've really got to police pit road.

"Those guys are working on the cars and you can't put anybody else in danger. Certainly they needed to come down to try to make that not happen."

However, Denny Hamlin felt a suspension might have been too severe a punishment.

"I don't know. That would be a big step," Hamlin said. "I think that you could argue with it, too heavy, too light, either way but to be surprised that he didn't get a suspension, I think that would be really over the top."

The one driver in the garage area who knows best what Busch is going through might be Kevin Harvick, who missed a race at Martinsville in 2002 after NASCAR parked him for rough driving during a Craftsman Truck Series race.

"It's a pretty stiff fine," Harvick said. "It could have been worse, though. He could have had to sit home a week and not race.

"I've been there, done that. That's no fun."