Tire testing leaves NASCAR offseason weirdness behind

Cars were back on the track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Monday. Drivers were back behind the wheel, running test laps. As far as I could tell, trained assassins were not hunkered down in the Earnhardt Terrace.

All of this had to be good news for NASCAR.

It has been the weirdest of off-seasons for the national stock car racing sanctioning body, with most of the weirdness caused by driver Kurt Busch of Las Vegas, and his ex-girlfriend, Patricia Driscoll of Parts Unknown.

The two seemed to be totally smitten with each other during Memorial Day weekend of the last racing season when Busch drove in the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 in the same day. They walked arm in arm, no distance between them, though Brad Keselowski might have been able to barge through.

That’s not the case anymore. Busch and Driscoll are splitsville, and their parting did not involve sweet sorrow of any kind. It only proved that what Neil Sedaka said was true, that breaking up is hard to do.

It has come down to a He Said, She Said that is much more interesting than that old movie of the same name starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins. In fact, it’s downright sensational.

According to the tabloids and the court manuscripts:

He said they were through, because she was taking too much of his time and he needed to focus on his racing.

She said he knocked her head into the wall three times in his motor home on race weekend.

He said he merely cupped her cheeks before admitting there might have been slight and accidental contact between ex-girlfriend head and motor home wall.

She said, long after the incident, she wanted a restraining order.

He said, long after the incident, she was a trained assassin sent on covert missions to Central America and other such places who once returned to their hotel room wearing a blood-splattered evening gown.

She said he cannot separate fact from fiction, that he got all that trained assassin, covert mission stuff from a movie script on which she has been working.

He said nothing further, at least not at the tire testing session at LVMS on Monday.

Kurt Busch did not make himself available to the local media to talk about the off-season weirdness, or even to talk about testing tires or what’s wrong with the UNLV basketball team.

Matt Kenseth came into the media center for a few minutes and said he really hasn’t been following the off-season weirdness. He may be the only one.

Brad Keselowski, who doesn’t like Kenseth very much — and vice versa, heavy on the vice versa — because of weirdness that happens on the track and after the race between the two leadfoots, came in after Kenseth. He was wearing a very cool Ayrton Senna blue Banco Nacional cap he had received for a Christmas present.

“It’s not my place to say good or bad,” the 2012 Cup champion said about what impact Busch’s off-track relationship is having on NASCAR’s reputation. “But it is my place to say that I wish the best for Patricia, and for Kurt, no matter how it turns out.”

Keselowski also said he still wants to buy a tank and park it in his driveway, but that he had to win a few more races first before checking with his homeowners association. Perhaps Patricia Driscoll can get him a deal on one from the covert mission people.

Anyway, this nasty court battle between Kurt Busch and his ex has almost everybody except Matt Kenseth talking at the office water cooler or on national TV. This would include Keith Olbermann, who went off on Busch and NASCAR in a negative way — though he called him Kyle Busch. And then Jimmie Johnson and Rusty Wallace, who have seven Cup championships between them — Jimmie with six, Rusty with one — went off on Olbermann.

It’s almost impossible to analyze what really happened between Busch and his ex unless some Ray Rice-type video evidence comes flying out of Turn 4. The only video I could find was on TMZ. It showed Patricia Driscoll shooting guns while wearing fatigues or scanty outfits and taking a bubble bath.

“I like to shoot as much as I like to dance and have sex,” she says on the video.

“If you cross her, she’ll grab you by the (testicles) and twist ’em and tear ’em right off,” says this military special projects guy with a tight smile. “She’s actually quite scary.”

So if I were Kurt Busch, and if any of this is true, I might be the one seeking the restraining order.

I believe it was Bob Arum, the boxing promoter, who once said there was no such thing as bad publicity. He didn’t address weird publicity. So it was good too see —or at least hear — cars on the track Monday, and drivers behind the wheel.

In a related note, Dale Earnhardt Jr. posted on Twitter that his dog had died.

If I had to form an opinion about any of this based on facts, it would be that I feel much more empathy for Junior than I do for Kurt Busch and his former girlfriend.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.