RACE REPORT.(Motorsports)

They've conjured up a new nickname for 500 laps around Bristol Motor Speedway: It's a punt, pass and kick contest. You punt someone aside and pass, then kick up a fuss when he punts back. That was the scenario throughout much of the bitterly cold Food City 500, which ended like this:

Kurt Busch punted leader Matt Kenseth sideways and passed en route to his first win for new owner Roger Penske. That opened the door for Busch's archenemy Kevin Harvick to slip by for second. Moments later, after some benign contact on worn tires, Kenseth punted third-running Jeff Gordon on the last lap, knocking him to 21st. Kenseth, Carl Edwards and Bobby Labonte completed the top-five.

Apologies, anyone? Are you kidding? (Well, at least Kenseth tried to make peace with Gordon. He was greeted by a hard, two-armed shove in the chest.)

"I bumped him,'' Busch said of his late-race move on Kenseth, a former teammate at Roush Racing. "If he says it was too hard, that's fine. If I had flat-out dumped him, there would have been a problem and I would have felt bad about it. But he was able to continue on. If Harvick had been able to catch me, he would have bumped me. That would have been fine. That's short-track racing at Bristol.''

The first of this year's six short-track races was typically chaotic. Eight drivers swapped the lead 19 times before Busch (three times for 33 laps) muscled past for good at 496. Tony Stewart dominated, leading 245 laps before losing the handle and fading to 12th. Kenseth led 124 laps. The remaining 98 were shared by Biffle (52), Kyle Busch (34), Harvick (eight), Gordon (three) and Kevin Lepage (one). Eighteen cautions for 104 laps kept the winning speed under 80 mph.

Kenseth wasn't as unhappy with Busch as you might think. After all, he had given away much of his lead by not bumping past Dale Jarrett toward the end. "I probably care too much about what other people think,'' said Kenseth, whose credo is "What would Mark Martin do?''

"I like to race the way I like to be raced, but I couldn't get [Jarrett] out of the way. That cost me the race. He held me up and Kurt knocked me out of the way. Anybody can do that. I would have passed him the right way or not at all,'' Kenseth said.