Cars Go Fast, Drivers Go Boom

Can a NASCAR team spontaneously combust?

I don't know, but we might get our answer next season. Joe Gibbs Racing announced Tuesday that Kyle Busch will drive the No. 18 car in 2008, joining two-time Nextel Cup champion Tony Stewart and reigning Rookie of the Year Denny Hamlin in the Super Bowl-winning coach's three-car stable.

Which is all fine and dandy ... Stewart and Hamlin are both stellar wheelmen, and many in the Nextel Cup garage feel Kyle Busch -- or as I call him, Shrub (he's Kurt Busch's younger brother) -- is one of the elite talents in the series, if not THE elite talent.

But, as important as driving the wheels off a racecar is, there's one fundamental reason this deal could blow up in Gibbs' face: the personalities.

Stewart is ... shall we say ... petulant. He often winds up scuffling on and off the track with drivers, partly because of his aggressiveness behind the wheel and partly because of his refusal to ever take any blame when he finds himself in an incident. Example: at Daytona last month, Stewart and teammate Hamlin wrecked after Stewart hit the back of Hamlin's car. Rather than saying he hit Hamlin and started the fray, Stewart decided to throw Hamlin under the bus and blame him for the accident.

Nice teammate, huh? That's like Derek Jeter screaming at Alex Rodriguez for missing a screaming line drive down the third-base line.

Hamiln, for his part, is immature at times. Though that's not totally unexpected ... he's only in his 20s and this is just his second full season in Nextel Cup. It wasn't too long ago this guy was watching Cup races at Richmond International Raceway and driving Late Models at Langley Speedway in Hampton, Va. But his rift with Stewart last month was enough to bring Gibbs out from vacation and preparing for the Redskins' season to hold a meeting.

Now, enter Busch, a ripe youngster at just 22. A stellar talent, no doubt -- already a four-time Nextel Cup winner -- but the attitude just isn't right with the boy. Ever since Hendrick Motorsports announced that Dale Earnhardt Jr. would drive the No. 5 (or whatever number it's going to be) in 2008, Busch has acted like the odd man out, complaining his teammated Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson didn't draft with him at Daytona and wondering publicly if maybe the organization had already kicked him out the door.

And we're not even talking about Shrub's on-track incidents -- many of which have involved Stewart. What's gonna happen the first time they tangle on the asphalt as teammates? Is Gibbs gonna have to leave Washington for another impromptu team meeting?

Even Gibbs himself can't ignore the potential pitfalls of pairing Busch with Stewart and Hamlin. At the news conference Tuesday, Gibbs addressed everyone over a vide screen, saying:

"I got to thinking about this: We've got Tony, and the way that Tony acts sometimes," Gibbs said. "And we've found that Denny is no piece of cake. And now we've got Kyle Busch? J.D., good luck!"

J.D., Gibbs' son, handles the day-to-day operations of Joe Gibbs Racing ... mostly because Gibbs himself is busy trying to turn the Washington Redskins into a Super Bowl winner again. Gibbs has three Super Bowl rings with the 'Skins and three Nextel Cup championships -- one with Bobby Labonte and two with Stewart -- so one would think that if any organization could make this explosive combination work, it would be this one. But Stewart and Busch are so volatile individually that combining them will, at some point, spell disaster. Add Hamlin to the mix and things could get interesting.

If nothing else, this threesome of drivers should make for great theatre. The big story in NASCAR in 2008 will be how Earnhardt Jr. fares at Hendrick -- arguably NASCAR's best team -- whether he wins races and contends for championships, or if he suffers more of the on-again, off-again success he's had over the years at Dale Earnhardt, Inc. But let's not forget the marriage of Shrub, Stewart and Hamlin ... because if everyone's not careful (and let's face it, these guys drive 200 mph weekly for a living ... how careful can they be?), this could get quite explosive.

And entertaining. I always did love a good explosion every now and again ...