After rancor at Martinsville, Busch back in comfort zone (cont'd)

"That's the appropriate time for really getting into the heart and the meat and potatoes of it. When you're out there in the heart of the action, it's always tough, because you're always clouded with things that are going on. Just to start second at Martinsville and fade throughout the day and finish 18th, yeah, we're happy to move on, because it could have been much worse," Busch said.

"I feel like Roger and I are definitely on the same page. I have the utmost respect for him. When we're in the heat of the battle, sometimes things are said that aren't really the right thing to say, but we do need to work on our short-track program if we want to be a contender once we get down the stretch run. That's all I was trying to imply."

Penske seemed to understand. "I think Kurt was just having one of those days," the car owner, in St. Petersburg, Fla., for the IndyCar season opener, told USA Today.

"I'd say as we went into Bristol and Martinsville, he had such success at Atlanta, he'd almost in his mind concocted that those two races were going to be tough. I think Martinsville is tough for everybody. Then the performance wasn't what he wanted. He's a driver that wants to go fast every lap. He wants to lead every lap. I think he's come a long way from the standpoint of what he's worked with the team and a lot of good work done on the cars. His expectation is to be out front and it manifested itself in the discussion. We talked about it this week and moved on."

Busch said his frustration at Martinsville stemmed from his "commitment not to lose and settle for mediocrity," but conceded that he might need to do a better job of acclimating to the role of senior driver at Penske, a mantle he inherited when former teammate Ryan Newman left for Stewart-Haas Racing. Like many drivers, he's not entirely comfortable with the fact that anyone with a scanner can listen in to radio communications on race day -- especially given that heated exchanges between team members aren't always indicative of how they get along off the track.

"The radio, I always thought, has been a team tool that should be utilized just by the teams," Busch said. "We don't get to hear what the coach says to his offensive and defensive coordinators in the NFL. I don't think that we get to hear what they do in baseball when they call to the bullpen. You don't get to hear what they say in the huddle, and what they say in the huddle is pretty animated. Roger and I are on the same page. Martinsville is behind us."

Busch is hardly alone. Dale Earnhardt Jr. said there isn't a driver in the garage area who doesn't regret something he's said over the radio at some point.

"You're only human, and you're in the heat of the battle, and there's nothing that matters at all but winning and getting the car running good and getting it right and getting it the way you want it. That's all that matters at that time," Earnhardt said. "When you're in that race car, nothing matters. Nothing else. Not family, not nothing. When you get out of the car you go, 'Wow, that either brought the best out of me or the worst out of me.' You say a lot of things and I think as you get older, not because you mature, but because you make mistakes, you do that less and you make a concerted effort to do that less because it's not good for either side. You don't feel good about it and the team can't appreciate it."

How does a rant like the one Busch unleashed on Penske last weekend -- or the one Kyle Busch directed on his Nationwide team at Bristol, or the one Tony Stewart let fly at his old Joe Gibbs Racing mates last fall at Richmond -- affect a team? Depends on the state of the relationship, Jeff Burton said.

"It's not like you're the only poor guy that's having to suffer on this particular day. There's a lot of people that are disappointed -- car owner, mechanics, engineers, sponsors, fans, there's a lot of people that are disappointed. You're not the only one," Burton said.

"I think that what's really important too is, what's the net of your relationship? You can say one thing and that shouldn't affect everybody's opinion of you. If you do it over and over and over and you're not part of the construction of the team and you're only part of the destruction of the team, then you lose a lot of respect. You've got to be willing when days are bad to express your opinion, but then go on and go to work. Try to make it better, and I think when people see you time after time after time put forth the effort when things aren't going well, then they don't care so much about what you say."

For Kurt Busch, the focus now turns to Texas, where Friday he qualified a disappointing 28th for the Samsung 500. Despite their success at Atlanta, the No. 2 team decided to bring a new chassis to Fort Worth.

"I think that the plan is to get as much information under our belts in the first few weeks of the season as we can," Busch said prior to qualifying. "Yeah, it was a great car in Atlanta. We know exactly what it shows us in the wind tunnel, and this car [at Texas] is slightly different and we want to put that underneath our belt as well. How different does it feel? We know what setup we ran in Atlanta, and we want to try just a different car here at Texas to get our portfolio bigger."