I have to commend Junior for one of the craftiest moves I've seen in NASCAR in a long time. He builds a good relationship with the No. 5 team by doing the crew a favor and pads his reputation as a nice guy, and at the same time he is gaining valuable information from the top team in the sport.

While I don't expect any driver to be leaving the track too soon again in the near future, this incident does raise an important question. Why don't high dollar teams always have an extra driver standing by to serve as a designated backup? These backups would only be driving after the car was wrecked or on the rare occasions when a driver gets sick or has an emergency to attend to, so they don't have to be high quality drivers, just a guy that can log laps. There are dozens of mediocre drivers that don't have a car of their own that would be thrilled to get some track time even if it is in a beat up car. Why risk the main driver getting hurt, puttering around the track in a wounded racecar when the backup can perform the same task?

The entire Busch-Earnhardt Jr. incident was one of the weirder things to happen in NASCAR to say the least. It was a mistake by Busch to leave the track prematurely and an even bigger mistake by Hendrick Motorsports to allow Dale Jr. to race the No. 5 car. Credit Junior with a savvy move, but don't expect anyone to pull off a similar maneuver anytime soon.