Hamlin, Busch deal disasters differently

Sometimes you wish these guys wouldn’t make it so easy.

Sunday afternoon Denny Hamlin loses a race at Martinsville that he dominated after getting contact from the guy, Jimmie Johnson, who winds up beating him. Hamlin gets out of the car and calmly and patiently answers questions.

Hamlin is not happy about losing. In fact, he’s fed up with it. But he behaves as an adult, expressing clearly both his frustration and his determination with his comments.

A day later, Kyle Busch is leading the weather-delayed Truck Series race when he gets rapped in the rear by Kevin Harvick.

Harvick eventually wins the race while Busch, because of a clear-cut error he made in running over the pit-road commitment line, has to serve a penalty and finishes 17th.

When the race ends, Busch parks his truck and climbs out. He sheds his helmet and HANS device, dumping it on the bed of the truck, and then proceeds to jog down pit lane while other trucks are still coming off the track. He hops pit wall, crosses the race track, jumps the outside wall and runs off into the parking lots.

It wasn’t just a tantrum, it was tantrum as grand gesture. He didn’t literally pull down his driver’s suit and his skivvies, but he still did what my dear, departed mom once characterized as “showing his fanny.”

Busch didn’t have to say a single word to any reporter following the Truck Series race. He could have simply waved off every television, radio and print reporter – it happens all the time. Or, he could have simply said he felt like he wasn’t raced fairly and left Harvick to answer his own questions about the end of the race.

It’s not impossible to behave as a professional after a disappointing outcome. Hamlin demonstrated that. What Busch demonstrated was something else altogether.