Officer, could you change those tires, quick, and check that spoiler!

NASCAR driver Kurt Busch was fined for reckless and drunken driving this week.

Now, the drunken part aside, how often must this happen to NASCAR or indeed any race car drivers?

Imagine it. Jeff Gordon pulls up to a stoplight. A teenager in a Mustang pulls up alongside of him. After the obligatory, "That thing got a Hemmie?" line from the sweaty, spotty lad in the Stang, he revs the engine up and infers the challenge, not knowing that the tired young man in the car next to him regularly drives at around 200 miles an hour for a living. Finally, as the light for the adjacent street turns yellow, the arrogant teen contemptuously shows him the finger right next to the one reserved for the wedding ring (and I don't mean the pinky.)

The light turns green. Two miles down the road a police officer is saying to Gordon, "Yeah, I would've done the same thing...but did you have to run him off the road and into that medical waste dumpster?"

If I were Gordon, I'd answer, "Unlike yourself, officer sir, I didn't have a gun." Instead he simply says, "Sorry, but he cut off the lane."

The officer laughs. As he tears the ticket out of the book and hands it to Gordon, he remarks, "That's one hell of a Tempo you've got there."

Gordon responds, "It's the girlfriend's. I just had some work done on it."