Introducing Bad-Boy Racing!

Picture this.

A four-car NASCAR Sprint Cup Series team comprised of a three-time series champion, the first driver to win NASCAR’s Chase, a perennial title threat and the best marketing machine in the garage.

Three of the four are hard-charging, don’t-take-a-lot-of-crap-or-you-won’t-like-it kind of drivers. If NASCAR kept such stats, they’d lead the league in aggressive tendencies, visits to the NASCAR hauler and time spent answering questions about why this or that was done and to whom.

Call it Bad-Boy Racing, the team with an edge.

Should Kurt Busch opt to join Stewart-Haas racing full-time next season, that is exactly what it will be.

Bad boys is not a pejorative. In fact, given the clamor from some fans for more action on the track, it might be a compliment of the first water.

Tony Stewart is as aggressive and hard-core as any driver in the sport. He’ll carry a car farther than just about anyone, and he’s not afraid to use the horn, so to speak. Plus, if you do him dirt, he doesn’t forget, and he’ll come see you about it, too. Just ask Joey Logano, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards, and so on.

Harvick is cut from the same cloth, with probably a little less restraint. He leads the league in dumping guys just for ticking him off. See Logano, Brian Vickers, Greg Biffle, et al, and he’s not above doing some Jungle Jim on a car hood to get to it or playing bumper cars on pit road (with or without driver).

Busch is legendary for burning up the team radio net with stuff your mama wouldn’t be proud of, and he’s not above a verbal roundhouse now and then. Ask Jerry Punch. He’s also hungry and humble, and eager to get back to the big teams. What he’s done with Furniture Row this year is nothing short of amazing. The Little Team That Could is on the cusp of making the Chase, and Busch’s wheel-man activities are a huge part of that.

He’s also capable of doing the full meltdown at the drop of a hat, as he has done on many occasions. It’s epic when he gets the wind up, too. A few years ago at Darlington, he started screaming and Navy SEALS were retreating, hands over ears.

I am purposely being a little over-the-top with descriptions.

The upshot is, you have a three-car stable of drivers who A) aren’t really all that inhibited about showing emotion, B) will flat drive under, over or through people to get to the front and C) don’t really care if you like those facts or not.

Of course, there are rules and by and large they follow them. Can’t make a living in NASCAR if you can’t get behind the wheel, you know. The imagery is stellar, though. Bad-Boy Racing!

This is not to slight Danica Patrick, by the way. For one, she’s a female, and that messes up the name. She doesn’t have the on-track chops that the others do, yet, but she’s a match for the going-to-see-someone part of it.

Several times, she’s had to be stopped at the pit wall before it all got out of hand. My friend Charles Burns has done it a couple of times, back in her Indy Car days, and there was a legendary cat fight between The Danica and fellow female driver Milka Duno a few years back.

This could be the single-most exciting team in the sport, is the point.

Stewart, Harvick and Busch are indeed top-rank drivers, and they all happen to be cut from a certain bolt of cloth. That ought to be exciting in its own right.