Busch should file criminal charges against Childress

Kyle Busch never hit Childress

NASCAR Sprint Cup team owner Richard Childress should be ashamed of himself.

He tackled Kyle Busch after the Camping World Truck series race at Kansas Speedway on Saturday and struck him in the face after putting him in a headlock as a result of Busch’s contact with RCR’s Joey Coulter during the cool-down lap.

Let’s get this straight right away: Childress — owner of Richard Childress Racing — is a 65-year-old man who knows very well that he had 26-year-old Busch in a no-win situation.

If Busch fights back he is seen as picking on a senior citizen and if he doesn’t — as he did not at Kansas — he is seen as a somewhat wimpish.

Well it says here that he is neither. Busch did the right thing by not fighting back against an elderly man more than twice his age.

Busch told SPEED TV that he was walking to his motor coach when confronted by Childress.

“There was an incident in the Truck Series garage, as I was leaving my hauler on my way out to the motor home lot," Busch said. “Unfortunately, (there) was an altercation between myself and Richard, and NASCAR’s looking into it to decipher all the facts of what happened and everything and make a decision based on all that."

NASCAR must punish Childress severely for his boorish — bordering on criminal — behavior.

That punishment is expected to come Monday after NASCAR president Mike Helton put all the blame for the incident on Childress in a statement Sunday.

“We’ve concluded that the driver of the No. 18 truck, Kyle Busch, did nothing to provoke or to cause the reactions that, in our opinion, would have violated probation," Helton said. “He did nothing that would have warranted the actions of Richard Childress."

As an interim measure Helton banned Childress from pit lane for Sunday’s STP 400, but that was really just a slap on the wrist.

Could you imagine what the NBA or NHL would do if one of its team owners came down from the stands and pounded on one of the players.

A $1-million fine in this case might not even be enough. Maybe take 43 points — the equivalent of a race win — from each of his NASCAR teams would be a suitable punishment.

Childress should in fact be contacting Busch to thank him for not seeking to have the RCR owner charged with criminal assault, something Busch — to his credit — said he would not pursue. Toronto Sun