End of the season? But it's just starting to get good (cont'd)

Evidently, Montoya took notes -- because the next day, after a series of on-track incidents that ended with Stewart spinning the Colombian, Montoya patiently waited for his car to be fixed. Then he came back out with one thing in mind, and it was Stewart's turn to go around. NASCAR warned Montoya that one more incident, and he'd be parked for the remainder of the event. By then, though, the message had already been sent.

Neither driver spoke afterward, but Montoya succinctly summed up his feelings with a post on his Twitter page. "I always said pay back is a b---h," he wrote, without using the dashes. In a post of his own, Hamlin joked that he must have inspired Montoya. After his victory in the Sprint Cup finale Sunday night, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver was asked if he had set a trend.

“

I always said pay back is a b---h.

”

JUAN MONTOYA

"I think everyone has got a little fight in them every now and then, especially when they get done wrong or anything," he said. "... I think it's just maybe [Montoya] looked at it and said, 'Well, it's worth it.' I thought [Saturday] was worth it, and maybe he thought [Sunday] was worth it. It's a self-policing sport. NASCAR does a really good job of letting us handle it. They don't want to get involved, but if it's something blatant, they've got to do it. They don't have to, but they feel like they need to do something about it, otherwise they'll hear repercussions from fans saying 'Why didn't you do anything about it?' I won't say anything else."

He didn't need to. To NASCAR's credit, the sanctioning body hasn't exactly come across as heavy-handed in all this. There have been on-track penalties, to be sure, like the one-lap punishment Hamlin served for punting Keselowski on Saturday, and Montoya's two-lap sentence a day later. There have been talking-tos, as there was a day after Hamlin and Keselowski made contact three times in the Nationwide race at Phoenix. But we haven't even heard the threat of fines or point deductions, at least not publicly. No question, NASCAR is watching all this. But to a large degree, they're also letting the drivers handle it themselves.

"This garage has a very good way of taking care of its own problems, and usually if you cause the most problems, you'll have the hardest time," said Kevin Harvick, who's had his share of run-ins with a number of other drivers over the years. "It's pretty simple. It's self-teaching. I went through that whole road. A lot of times you can fix things by not doing it in a race car. I didn't see what happened [Sunday], but you have your moments where you lose your mind and lose your temper and you want to just run over the top of somebody. If turnabout is fair play and it's penalized, then it needs to be penalized. We just all need to know the rules. But I think there's probably a lot better ways of handling it."

From a driver standpoint, though, probably none more gratifying and from a spectator standpoint, probably none more fun to watch. As long as drivers don't start openly slugging one another, NASCAR seems to welcome the energy and drama these incidents create. That much comes straight from the top.

"What we want is drivers who are driving hard, that are driving to win," chairman Brian France said. "When that happens, you're going to have some situations where there's contact. We're a contact sport. You didn't see us over-respond when that happened. What happened in the Nationwide race in Phoenix, what you're always worried about, with retaliation, all those things, is escalation, unintended consequences. But on balance, there's no question, we're encouraging drivers. When Carl [Edwards] last year made the last-lap attempted pass [at] Kansas City, you heard us applauding that. You didn't hear us saying anything other than that was a daring move by one of the better drivers. So we're pretty much committed. But we also regulate the events. You have to make sure that there are limits to hard driving and rivalries and whatever. But we certainly want them."

So there you go. Let the feuds continue, within reason. But really, do we have to wait until February to see if these guys are still mad at each other? Is Rockingham or North Wilkesboro available on short notice? Can't we just have one more race?

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.