It's always Busch's fault, even when it might not be (cont'd)

"When I was in the care center, I saw the replay and it looked like the 18 was just completely impatient," said Brian Vickers, also involved in the crash. "Very normal. Just hooked [Truex] in the right rear and turned him in front of the field. If you wreck somebody on the straightaway, you kind of should be black-flagged for it, but that's NASCAR's call, not my call. That's the second week in a row that stupidity has cost us a race, and it's frustrating. I guess everybody just learns to expect Kyle doing something stupid. Stupid is forever."

Jeff Burton, David Ragan and Kevin Harvick also were knocked out, while David Reutimann and Casey Mears suffered damage. Truex, mired in a miserable season, waited on Busch to circle past under the ensuing caution, and faked throwing his helmet at the No. 18 car before getting into the ambulance for his mandatory ride to the care center.

"This isn't Pocono or Michigan. The front straightaway isn't 30 car-lengths wide. People get checked up. You just have to chill out and wait until you can race them," Truex said. "I don't race on a restart basically with 150 laps to go or whatever it was. There was no reason for it. Our car is tore up, and I am pissed about it."

Somebody else blamed Busch, as well -- Busch himself. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver made a point of apologizing in every interview he did after the race.

"I've got to apologize to all the guys who got tore up in that melee there," he said. "It wasn't meant to happen like that. From my vantage point, the 88 [car of Earnhardt] spun his tires, and I shot for the middle. The middle closed up when the 42 [car of Juan Montoya] came down a little bit, and I pinched myself with the 1 [car of Truex]. I just barely tapped him in the right rear and sent him sideways and spinning down the frontstretch. I hate it for those guys. I don't know if they're in a Chase berth or not, but I hate it for Martin and Jeff Burton and the rest of the guys who got tore up there. My fault on that deal."

And yet, circumstances clearly played a role. NASCAR's new double-file restart rule gets the lapped cars out of the way, but it also frontloads the field with faster vehicles, many of them steered by drivers who need every position to secure a berth in the Chase. There was some intense, desperate driving on display Sunday, and often it was riveting to watch. Then there's New Hampshire, easily the smallest, tightest facility drivers have competed on under the new rule. No question, it was fun to see cars rub against one another, or force it three- or even-four wide on a track barely wide enough for two. But nearly every restart was a wreck waiting to happen, whether Busch was involved or not.

"There are negatives to everything, and this is it," Burton said. "It's more exciting, and with excitement comes more wrecks. That's just how it goes. When you double everybody up like that, you're going to have wrecks. That doesn't make it wrong. But you're going to have more wrecks, and you're going to have more stuff going on. It is what it is."

Think New Hampshire was hairy? Just wait until the series revisits short tracks like Bristol and Martinsville under this format. We'll get a taste of what havoc they may hold when the Nationwide Series -- which adopts the double-file rule next weekend at Daytona -- competes at .68-mile O'Reilly Motorsports Park in Indianapolis on the night before the Sprint Cup cars take to the Brickyard.

"I think we need to look at double-file restarts on mile-and-a-half [tracks] or bigger," Busch said. "It's too congested and too crazy here. We don't have room to race. It's already a one-lane race track, and trying to put two cars in one lane is tough."

Of course, a garage full of angry competitors likely had no interest in listening to possible solutions coming from the driver who was at the center of Sunday's biggest accident. And Busch's willingness to take the high road probably won't win him any points with the considerable segment of the fan base that would see him as public enemy No. 1 even if he donated every dime of his winnings to charity and joined the Peace Corps. But that's how it goes for NASCAR's resident villain. It's always his fault -- even when it might not be.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.