Leave it to Kyle Busch to close out the week on a fun note. When asked about the role of manufacturers in NASCAR and how their support is essential to the sport, Kyle gave us this beautiful analysis (thanks to Nuts n’ Bolts):
“It’s no different than good versus evil — you’ve got to have a villain to have a hero, Batman tells you that in his movie. This sport tells you that as well too. You have to have manufacturers battling against each other. You can’t have one manufacturer that just takes over the deal then there’s really nothing that you’re battling about or battling for.
“Ultimately, we need to have Ford, we need to have Chevrolet, we need to have Chrysler - all those guys need to be in this sport. Toyota is a great manufacturer — I’ve had a lot of success with these guys and same with Chevrolet. I would say that Toyota is probably a little bit better off right now than the other manufacturers are, but if those other manufacturers pull out and don’t give the support to teams in trucks or to Nationwide or ultimately to the Cup Series then Toyota is not going to have any support either. They’re going to back all their stuff out too.
“It’s kind of a ‘monkey-see, monkey-do’ deal and we need those other manufacturers to stay up and stay strong in order to keep the money flowing from Toyota.”
He actually makes some solid points about competition in there — in a kind of roundabout, Saturday morning cartoon kind of way. Though I’d be willing to bet that Toyota isn’t quite as sanguine about keeping its competitors in the game as Kyle is.
Now, my sloppy Photoshopping aside, I’m sure that Kyle sees himself more as the Joker than as the Batman. (Ah, but is he the Jack Nicholson look-at-me-I’m-murderously-wacky Joker or the Heath Ledger chaos-for-its-own sake Joker? Hmm.)
