BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Welcome to the newest reality series sweeping NASCAR: Kyle Busch's Tough Love.

It's not for the faint of heart. It will never be confused with NASCAR Angels. It's gritty, uncensored, and at times painful to watch. But it's never boring, as the events of this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway will attest. After Nationwide and Sprint Cup events with starkly different outcomes for the Joe Gibbs Racing standard-bearer, one thing is clear -- working with the immensely talented, immensely confident and immensely demanding 23-year-old can be about as unforgiving as feeding sharks without the cage. There's always the risk of getting chewed up.

Busch beats Bristol

Kyle Busch has dominated Bristol before only to come up empty-handed. Not this time as he cruises to victory.

• Complete story
• Lap-by-Lap: Bristol
• Video: Final Laps
• Video: Victory Lane
• Video: Press Pass

Let's go to the videotape. In Saturday's episode the star of the show was about to win another Nationwide Series event, until he made a pit stop with 46 laps remaining. That's when a tire bounced off the concrete pit wall during and got away from his crew. Busch left the box with the tire still unsecured, earning him a stop-and-go penalty and eventual sixth-place finish. His displeasure was evident over the radio. "Y'all suck!" he chided his team before parking his car in Turn 3, right by the track's exit tunnel. Furious, he took off while his rebuked and bewildered crew was still trying to determine where the vehicle was.

It was all quite a cliffhanger, the drama leaving viewers wondering how Busch and his Sprint Cup crew -- which includes two members of the Nationwide team called out a day earlier -- would react once the main event went green before a sellout crowd of 160,000 fans. Would hard feelings carry over? Would they give him too much wedge on purpose? Slip water into his fuel cell? Instead they acted like consummate professionals, finding themselves in almost the exact same situation the Nationwide crew had been in a day earlier, and turning in a stop that propelled the No. 18 car to its second victory of the year.

"[Saturday] was [Saturday]. We put that behind us," Busch said Sunday, after leading 378 laps and staying out front thanks to a final stop that got him out ahead of teammate Denny Hamlin, who finished second. "Yeah, it was very frustrating. It's one you'll never get back. It's lost, gone. The trophy is not at my house. It's at [race winner Kevin] Harvick's. We looked forward to [Sunday]. Everybody put their job from [Saturday] behind them, but thought about how to make [Sunday] better, and not have those same mistakes happen again."

Forget pep talks. Busch's only motivational speech Sunday was a short one, and it came after the second-to-last pit stop, with memories of the previous day still fresh. "I told the ladies to man up, get the job done on the last stop, which they did," he said. "I'm proud of them for doing that. When the time mattered most, they got the job done."

“

These guys are great. If they don't know that, they don't need to be working for me. They appreciate what I do behind the wheel. I appreciate what they do on pit road. That's a given in any team.

”

-- KYLE BUSCH

There's no touchy-feely stuff here, just a demand for performance. Busch said he didn't meet with his crew prior to Sunday's race to try and iron out any differences from the day before, or make sure they felt appreciated. This ain't Oprah, people. "If they don't know that, they don't need to be working for me. These guys are great. They appreciate what I do behind the wheel. I appreciate what they do on pit road. That's a given in any team," he said.

"Those guys should hang their head for that night, but then wake up the next morning rejuvenated and ready to go, and should have thought about all the stuff that happened [Saturday] [Saturday], and not worry about that [Sunday], and let it get to them [Sunday]. There's ways to get better in this sport, and the only way to do that is to jump back out there. It's basically, you know, reviewing your fear. You just get back out there and do it over again."

Smoothing things over is Steve Addington's job. The crew chief, whose low-key demeanor often offsets his driver's unchecked intensity, met with his crew Sunday morning and reported no issues lingering from the day before.

"You have to have tough skin in this business or you need to be doing something else. You have to take constructive criticism and work hard at it. [Busch] does an awesome job in that race car. I know that he's out there trying to win. And he just wants us to be that way. That's the way we all look at it," Addington said.

"I think for the organization, you know, they wanted to win [Saturday] just like they wanted to win [Sunday]. So they had a mistake on pit road. It was on the last stop, and it cost them. [Sunday] they stepped up to the plate and made it happen on the last stop. So they understand that. They understand what's going on. That's why it works with this 18 car."

It does, as 10 race victories in the last 38 event weekends will attest. Car owner Joe Gibbs praises Busch for occasionally stopping by the race shop and buying his crewmen lunch. Addington says the driver takes care of his teammates in ways the public can't see. But what the public often does see are words and actions that only feed the negative image so many have of Busch, as the thunderous boos that rained down on him in driver introductions will attest. Episodes like Saturday's only provide more ammunition for those in the grandstand who see him as petulant and spoiled, obscuring even the phenomenal talent so obvious on Sunday as he flawlessly picked his way through lapped traffic.

It's almost like there are two sides to Kyle Busch. There's the one who can blow away the field, unleash a massive burnout, tweak the crowd with a little bow, donate an entire winner's check to an aging former champion, and appear very much like a normal guy away from the race track. Then there's the one who can erupt with almost volcanic force, who can use choice language when warning his crew to make the right adjustment on his race car, who often struggles to deal with the adversity that is innate to Sprint Cup racing -- and who, in the eyes of all those booing fans Sunday, is the only Busch that exists.

Yet sometimes, he doesn't seem to mind.

"I'm not out there to be No. 1," he said. "We all know who No. 1 is and forever will be. To me, I go out there to win races, to be No. 1 on the race track. That's where I feel like I win, where my benefit is. You know, to go out there and to have Steve Addington and Joe Gibbs, [sponsor] Mars Company, everybody that works so hard to make this program happen is what it all boils down to. For me, I don't think I would enjoy having the most fans out there. I actually like the way I am, the role I portray. And I think that there's probably too much pressure on one guy's shoulders who doesn't seem to win very often. But for us, it's a blast to go out there and do what we do."

Those were, of course, a couple of not-so-veiled shots at Dale Earnhardt Jr., NASCAR's most popular driver, who's won only once in his last 103 Sprint Cup starts and finished 14th Sunday. The two drivers have a bit of a history -- it was Earnhardt who ultimately took Busch's ride at Hendrick Motorsports -- and don't necessarily get along very well. Will Earnhardt retaliate? Tune into next week's episode and find out.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.