Chastened Kurt Busch takes Daytona misfortune in stride

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- It didn't take long -- one practice session, in fact -- to see how different life is for Kurt Busch.

His new car was wrecked in the first practice session of the season Friday, and the backup car Phoenix Racing had on hand at Daytona International Speedway was missing its seat.

Not exactly putting the fun back into racing, eh?

The Las Vegas native took a calm approach to Friday's accident, which began when defending NASCAR champion Tony Stewart turned him as he pushed Busch's car at Daytona International Speedway. It wrecked a really good racecar -- Busch had the fastest 10-lap average over the practice session -- and guaranteed a long day of work for Phoenix Racing to get him ready for tonight's exhibition Budweiser Shootout.

"Just all the hard work, and the limited cars we have, we don't need to have wrecked cars," said Busch, who, after thanking sponsor Tag Heuer, smiled. "We'll be all right."

Busch is working hard this season to repair his reputation and learn to enjoy life a little more. He struggled with that the last few years at Penske Racing, where his intense focus and constant desire to win often blinded him from the big picture. An ill-handling racecar often sent him into an obscenity-laced rant, and incidents with rival Jimmie Johnson left him seeing red.

His temper got the best of him time and time again, and the final straw came in the season finale at Homestead, where he lashed out at an ESPN reporter in an incident captured by a fan and posted on YouTube. Busch and Penske Racing mutually agreed to split two weeks later, and Busch said at the time it was obvious he was unhappy and he desperately needed to "put the fun back in racing."

That's what he's trying to do now with James Finch's underfunded race team.

He landed at Phoenix Racing in the No. 51 Chevrolet, and spends many days in the Spartanburg, S.C., race shop. He said the team has 18 employees, but every time he counts, he only comes up with 16.

The team doesn't have a sponsor for the Feb. 26 season-opening Daytona 500, and with a season-long need to find funding, Busch is determined to prove he's a tremendous value. In doing so, though, he's reluctant to claim he's a changed man or got a clean slate ahead of him.

"There's no fresh start here. There's no new image. There's no revamping," he said. "Time will take care of that, and I hope by October people will realize that when I said I'm going to put the fun back in racing, that they can see that I've done that. It just doesn't happen overnight."

But Busch is different.

Although he still tries to stay on message in interviews, he doesn't seem to be as guarded. He smiles and makes self-deprecating jokes, and willingly admits he has made many mistakes.

He's still careful with his words, though, nervous that something he says will be misconstrued or perceived as him being arrogant, or, even worse, a jerk. The negative impact from that YouTube video hasn't completely faded.

"Nearly a million people viewed it and 99 percent of the people say, 'Wow, he is a raging lunatic,' " Busch said. "It's those one big moments that kill everything. When you go to the grocery store, somebody is looking at you and they know it's you and they don't think they can approach you because they think you are (a jerk).

"And then they come up to you and find out they can get an autograph, they can get a picture and suddenly it's, 'Oh, wow, you're really not such a bad guy after all.' It's tough sometimes because I've got to break through that ice with people."