Carl Edwards hunted down Kyle Busch from behind at Bristol, upsetting the hot-tempered Busch in the process. AP

Finally, NASCAR has a feud worth watching as the two best drivers in the series in 2008, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards, let their real feelings for each other show at the end of Saturday night's race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Just when it looked like Busch was going to dominate the race by having his Toyota Camry in front for practically the entire race, Edwards was able to use the bumper of his Ford Fusion to loosen up Busch's Toyota late in the race. The widely-accepted short track tactic worked as Busch moved up the track and Edwards went by with the race-winning move.

But after Edwards took the checkered flag, Busch was ticked off and showed it to Edwards when he drove up beside him on the cool-down lap and ran into his car.

Edwards decided he'd had enough of "Young Shrub" and spun him out after the race had ended.

"The way this works is [how] a real smart racer explained to me after he wrecked me and I was real mad," Edwards said. "He said, 'I just had to look at your rear bumper and decide, would you do this to me? And you had before, so it was a real simple decision.'

"Earlier in the year we had a Nationwide race and Kyle was a lot faster than me and he went ahead and got to my back bumper and just smoked the back bumper of my car and sent me up the race track. Afterwards he said, 'Sorry man, my car was just faster.'

"So, in my mind, I had to ask myself when I went down there in the corner, 'Should I lift and brake early and do the best I can, or should I just kind of give him a little tap and see what happens.' So that's the way it went and that's the decision I made. I'd do it again."

Busch was a bit peevish afterwards and vowed to escalate the matter in the Chase when Busch and Edwards will be the two featured combatants in the 10-race series that will determine this year's Sprint Cup champion.

"He spun me out," Busch said. "So I just got into him a little bit and let him know that I didn't appreciate the way he passed me and he retaliated and ended up spinning me out."

When told that Edwards had made a half-hearted apology in Victory Lane for the incident, Busch scoffed.

"He does that and he'll always come back and say he's sorry," Busch said. "He did it at Milwaukee (in a Nationwide Series race to leader Clint Bowyer) and he's done it a few other times. It's just his normal fashion -- that's fine. I've grown to know that now.

"You know, to pass a guy, to hit him getting into the corners and chatter his tires is what he did. But I tried to get him back, but I thought better of it and tried to pull down and pass him back. But I didn't have a good enough car to stick, and Denny [Hamlin] got to his outside and he got by me, and then I had to battle with him toward the end. We were as clean as could be, of course, but just one other dude we had a problem with."

After the race, Busch's team owner, J.D. Gibbs, walked up to Edwards to discuss the situation.

"He just explained to me that you reap what you sow, which I believe, and I explained to him that that's why that happened that way," Edwards said. "That's it. I have a lot of respect for him and the organization. They do a really good job and I really look up to them, so that's that."

After two straight years of watching Jimmie Johnson and his corporate image win the championship with all the excitement of filing your taxes, an Edwards-Busch throw-down could be great fun.

At last, a feud worth watching.

Team Penske smokes 'em

In a week that began with one of the team's transporters burning to the ground, destroying the two primary cars that were set to race at Infineon Speedway, it must have lit a spark under Team Penske as it finished 1-2 in Sunday's IndyCar contest.

After preparing the two backup cars, Helio Castroneves was able to break a 29-race winless drought to capture the Peak Antifreeze & Motor Oil Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma County. Penske teammate Ryan Briscoe was second, giving the team its second 1-2 finish this season and the 36th in Indy car competition.

After the race Roger Penske celebrated by whisking into his paddock area on his scooter and climbing into the Team Penske office motorhome parked next to the team's transporters at Infineon Raceway. He went inside, grabbed a Drumstick ice cream cone out of the freezer and plopped into his chair in the back office trying to get out of the heat.

"That was good, wasn't it?" Penske said in his back office. "It shows the true colors of my guys in automobile racing, overcoming adversity and then being able to come back like this. To get Helio off the bubble when he hadn't won a race was key. And Briscoe was a good teammate with strategy to finish both cars and not get into trouble.

"When you throw in what happened earlier this week, it's amazing."

Amazing, but not surprising to a team as well-oiled as Team Penske. What would be devastating to most teams became an obstacle and a challenge to Penske's operation.

The devastating fire all started when the heat from the burning bearing caused a flat tire about 60 miles west of Cheyenne, Wyoming. When the drivers pulled off to the side of the road, they discovered the tire was flat because the wheel was on fire. They tried to put out the blaze with a fire extinguisher, but the fire quickly spread. With consumables such as oil and lubricants fueling the blaze, there was little that could be done to keep the fire under control. Cell phones did not work because there was no signal in the remote area of Wyoming. Soon, the entire transporter was ablaze, so the only thing left to do was unhitch the trailer from the tractor in order to save the semi.

Sadly, the drivers watched it burn. About 30 minutes later, a fire truck finally arrived but it was too late to save two fully-prepared IndyCars, a shock dyno, all the crew member uniforms and other tools.

Team president Tim Cindric estimated a loss between $1 million to $3 million.

After Cindric got the call about the fire, the team started to "dig pretty deep in a big hurry" on Wednesday morning. The team put cars, parts and pieces into another truck, and six hours later, it was beginning the long drive from the team's shop in Mooresville, N.C. to Sonoma, Calif.

Luckily, the team had two IndyCars already at Infineon Raceway that were used in an open test session at the track the week after the Kentucky IRL race.

With the win Castroneves found a silver lining in the incident.

"Hopefully, this fire turned our luck around," said Castroneves. "It's like the flood in Reading, Pennsylvania and we were able to come back and win at Kansas in the next race (in 2006). We seem to overcome in those circumstances."

With the victory, Castroneves was able to trim a 78-point deficit to points leader Scott Dixon down to 43 points, but with two races remaining, the team owner is pragmatic enough to realize it will take an unexpected collapse from Dixon for Castroneves to win the title.

"I think Dixon will be very tough to beat unless he has a DNF," Penske said. "He is a hell of a driver and you will see him use his head the last two races. For us, it was go for it and that's what we did."