There are some Bristol leftovers, so let's pass them around

OK, there are a lot of leftover things from Bristol that I want to touch on and hear from you guys about:

1. I know you've heard about what Kevin Harvick said about Kurt Busch on Friday. I want to tell you how that happened. Harvick was the guest at the weekly "Nextel Wake-Up Call," a press opportunity that's done at every track.

He'd been asked about 10-12 questions covering a wide range of topics and we were coming to the end of the session. Several times this year, I've tried to ask Cup drivers a very open-ended question to see if there's anything on their minds that we might not be asking about.

I asked Harvick if there he felt there were things that people believe about him that are wrong, misconceptions or bad assessments that he'd like to challenge. It was a softball, frankly, and he turned that into a series of punch lines about Busch that turned into a big deal that would have turned into a HUGE deal if Harvick had been able to get to Busch's rear bumper in the final laps of Sunday's race.

There's never been any love lost between Harvick and Busch, and I know Harvick still had hard feelings from a late-race incident at Atlanta in which that pair and David Stremme were involved.

But I do believe that Busch was on the nose when he said Harvick's intent was to create a story to get the media off the trail of his contract situation with Richard Childress Racing and, potentially, Toyota.

Mission accomplished.

But the other side of that is that at Martinsville and beyond, Harvick absolutely cannot accuse the media of agitating that story by continuing to ask about it. He started it on his own terms.

2. I believe I could come up with a very convincing argument on both sides of whether what Busch did to Matt Kenseth on Lap 496 was fair.

On the one hand, drivers will tell you that it's against the "code" to try to wreck somebody to pass them, even if it's for the lead with five laps left at Bristol. Kenseth said that's what Busch did, and of course Busch did not agree.

For sure, Busch wasn't alongside Kenseth when he bumped him, he was behind him. In some drivers' eyes, that makes a difference. On the other hand, if Busch had just ridden around in second and not tried to win, what would people be saying about him?

You've got to do what you can to win, don't you? It certainly makes for a good debate.

3. If Robby Gordon had shoved Matt Kenseth after the race, reckon he'd get the same discipline from NASCAR that Jeff Gordon gets?

4. Bumping somebody out of the way constitutes "aggressive driving" and draws a penalty at Daytona. Bumping somebody out of the way at Bristol is "how you pass?"

5. Some folks have pointed out to me that the rear TV panel on Dale Jarrett's Ford might not have been made out of sheet metal but out of Fiberglas. OK, but when it flies off the car into the stands it's still a projectile.

If that situation had been addressed as it was happening by NASCAR, the whole outcome of Sunday's race might have changed given Jarrett's role in keeping Kenseth behind him as Busch was catching up.