Don't believe all that you hear on NASCAR airwaves

The voice on the other end of the telephone was almost breathless. "Did you hear about the NASCAR driver who got in a fight?" asked the wife, clearly excited at the prospect of breaking news to a husband who allegedly covers the sport for a living. She passed on the link to her celebrity pseudo-news home page, and alongside the latest on Mary-Kate and a slideshow on NASCAR wives and girlfriends, there was indeed a photo of Pocono race winner Carl Edwards -- his jaw set, his eyes steely, his visage under the caption "NASCAR Star Loses His Cool."

I felt a flush of panic. Had I completely missed a big story? Was there some post-race throwdown at the Tricky Triangle? Had Edwards donned his camo shorts and Metal Militia T-shirt and gone marauding through a northeastern Pennsylvania Office Depot? Full of trepidation, I clicked on the link, fully expecting to read a vivid account of someone being punched or kicked or bitten, the kind of unfortunate incident that journalists have to chase for a week and athletes have to duck for a lifetime.

Instead, I read a story about Edwards arguing with his crew chief.

Please. If jawing with a crew chief in the middle of a race is considered "losing your cool," then NASCAR drivers are right up there with Marine drill instructors and John McEnroe. In reality, few competitors are better at leaving arguments behind them and maintaining team relationships despite the more-than-occasional squabble. Granted, Edwards' argument with crew chief Bob Osborne was by all accounts heated, and it took place in public, right on top of the No. 99 pit box during a rain delay. But it's no different from what goes on over the radio dozens of times over the course of a Sprint Cup event.

As anyone who monitors a scanner during a race is well aware, arguments between drivers and crew chiefs pop up like thunderheads on a hot afternoon. Tony Stewart and Greg Zipadelli can trade curse words like sailors on leave. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Eury Jr. can fight like two feral cats tied up in a sack. Mark Martin and Tony Gibson haggled vehemently over whether to pit in the closing laps at Phoenix. Greg Biffle and Denny Hamlin have chastised their respective pit crews, Kyle Busch has criticized his vehicle. Edwards and Osborne got into it Sunday over whether to pit prior to a rain delay. No crew chief on the circuit is immune from hearing his driver launch into an F-bomb-laced tirade over how tight or loose his car might be at the moment. The meek, the thin-skinned and the easily offended don't last for very long.

But here's the beauty of it: 99 percent of the time, those arguments end when the shouting subsides. The way drivers and crew chiefs interact over the radio is sometimes taken as an indication of the state of their working relationship, when in reality nothing could be further from the truth. In a heated competition requiring quick decision-making, arguments are an inevitability. While there are exceptions -- Kurt Busch's caustic comments over the radio didn't exactly endear himself to his crew in his early days at Roush Racing -- few in this business can afford to hold grudges. There are always more cars to set up, more tests to conduct and more races to run, events that require drivers and crew chiefs to move past whatever differences of opinion they might have had. (Continued)