“You’ve got to make the most popular driver in the sport competitive, so you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do I guess,” Busch said of the crew chief change. “He’s the one that brought that crew chief on, he’s the one that pulled so hard to bring [Tony] Eury Jr. in and it looked like it was working there in the beginning and just hasn’t worked since summer of last year really. Whatever makes him better I guess.”

“He’s always had a chip on his shoulder for me,” Earnhardt Jr. explained of Busch. “I expect anytime he gets an opportunity to throw a jab in there he’s going to do it. That’s just his personality. We’re working toward trying to figure out how we can make our deal work and that has nothing to do with Kyle.”

Earnhardt Jr. is right in saying this has nothing to do with Kyle. In fact, Kyle believes this has nothing to do with Kyle. The only reason Kyle offered his two cense on the situation was because he was asked.

Some in the media preferred to turn the situation with Earnhardt Jr. into much more that it was. By bringing Busch and his always colorful mouth into the mix, certain members of the media looked to add fuel to the fire in an attempt to create a rivalry. Even further, following the race, one sports highlights program showed nothing but Busch and Earnhardt Jr. passing one another throughout the race as if that was the only action on the track.
Sure, these two have had their run ins in the past – think back to last year’s races at Richmond – and the fact that Busch was booted from Hendrick Motorsports in favor of Earnhardt Jr., but that does not mean a rivalry automatically exists between the two.

“It’s just people trying to build up, some of the media trying to build up,” Busch explained Friday in Pocono. “To me, I’ve got no issues with Dale Jr. whatsoever. It wasn’t him that kicked me out of Hendrick Motorsports, to be honest with you it was Casey Mears. It is what it is. Junior had a strong run last weekend, it was start in the right direction for him.”

“Everybody knows it’s good to have a rivalry,” four-time series champion Jeff Gordon told HardcoreRaceFans.com. “It’s hard to create your own rivalry. I think Kyle is a little bit involved in that. I think he’d like there to be one and I don’t think Junior is really as involved in that as Kyle is.”

The best rivalries in the sport’s long history occurred on their own. Pearson and Petty, Gordon and Earnhardt, even Kurt Busch and Jimmy Spencer happened because the drivers and their teams took it upon themselves to create the rivalry. When a rivalry is forced, it is obvious and it loses some of its appeal.

“When Earnhardt and I were rivals,” Gordon added, “he probably put through some jabs in there and might have helped create a little of it, but most of it was me and him battling on the race track for the championship and for races and for wins and the unique fan base that we had. Mine were completely different than his. And so the fans were really rivals. That’s how a true rivalry is created. And we can’t make it happen. As much as we want to sometimes, it’s got to happen under real circumstances. You’ve either got to really dislike a guy or just battle it out, wheel-to-wheel, bumping and banging on a fairly regular basis and then let the fans and the media and everything roll with it.”

Earnhardt Jr. and Busch rarely find one another on the track these days. As Busch pointed out in his controversial comment, Junior and his organization are struggling to regain the competitive edge, while Busch is typically running up front until bad luck bites him.

There is no doubt the No. 88 team and Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a lot to work though in the coming weeks. A crew chief change is never easy to overcome, and when you are the most popular driver in the sport, the scrutiny is much more intense and makes it that much more challenging to focus. Involving Busch makes an already difficult and stressful situation that much tougher and is like giving a box of matches to a pyromaniac – something is going to ignite.

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