Drivers apologize to fans for traffic

When the post race press conferences rolled around there were the normal questions about the race, but most members of the press wanted to know about the traffic issues that have by far plagued the Kentucky Speedway’s inaugural Sprint Cup race.

“It’s disappointing. I mean, the SMI group knows racetracks and does a very good job at all the racetracks they own. It's unfortunate we were unable to look ahead and see where these potential problems were,” said five-time champ Jimmie Johnson after Saturday night’s Quaker State 400.

A look down Ky 35, full of race fans

Denny Hamlin was caught in pre-race traffic. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver thought he was going to miss the driver’s meeting at 5:30 p.m. From the gridlock he tweeted, “Good news bad news/bad news is I'm prolly not gonna make the drivers meeting in 3 hrs because I'm in this traffic with everyone else.”

“This is such a great market,” said Johnson. “So many fans are enthused to come and want to be here. To not get them all in the door is kind of a bummer. Knowing Bruton, he'll get it fixed for next year and unfortunately it happened this year.”

A question came down from the press box to race winner Kyle Busch during his post race press conference.

“Kyle, did I hear you say in Victory Lane you're staying overnight and heading out tomorrow?” one reporter asked.

Busch and Crew Chief Dave Rogers

“That's right,” the race winner responded.

“That makes you not only the fastest man on the track, but the smartest man,” commented the reporter.

“I had this planned long ago not thinking about what transpired here tonight,” Busch replied. “Seems like I'm pretty smart, I guess. I'm just falling into the lucky category.”

Many drivers, including Michael Waltrip, tweeted to the fans their sincerest apologies for the traffic issues in the Bluegrass State.

“I can't say sorry enough to the fans who went thru traffic issues..we all understand that without fans coming to races...we have nothing,” tweeted Elliott Sadler, who ran the Camping World Truck Series race and the Nationwide race at Kentucky.

Brian Vickers took to his twitter account to issue this message: “Thx 2 all the great fans 4 coming out tonight. I apologize on behalf of our sport 4 all the traffic problems, It was unexceptable (sic) bullshit!”

And even though the traffic was bad, and drivers reached out to fans, they could rave enough about how awesome the crowd was at Kentucky.

“Hats off to this area, the racing, people in this area, everybody that was here, everybody that couldn't get here,” said Coach Joe Gibbs, owner of Busch’s car. “We appreciate being here. I think it's a huge deal. I appreciate NASCAR and everybody, Bruton, everybody that helped us get to this part of the country to race.”

They all hope that there are no issues heading into next year’s race at Kentucky. And I’m relatively sure everyone else is in the same boat.