Congresswoman writes letter asking for Kurt Busch’s suspension
HOMESTEAD, Fla. – U.S. Representative Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) sent NASCAR and Stewart-Haas Racing a letter calling for Kurt Busch’s suspension in the wake of a domestic violence allegation against him.
Last week, the Dover (Del.) Police Department said it was investigating Busch after Patricia Driscoll, Busch’s ex-girlfriend, claimed he had assaulted her. In Driscoll’s claim, she said Busch smashed her head against the wall of his motorhome three times on September 26 after a poor qualifying effort at Bristol. The two had broken up the week before.
Busch’s lawyer, Rusty Hardin, has called the accusations a fabrication. Busch has not been charged in relation to the incident and has not been interviewed yet as police continue the investigation.
SI.com first wrote about the letter. From SI:
“But despite the severity of the criminal allegations against Mr. Busch,” Speier writes, “I am disappointed to see that NASCAR and Stewart-Haas Racing have not taken any action. Your response to these serious allegations has been totally inadequate.”
The adequate response, according to Speier, would be a suspension and a new NASCAR policy about domestic violence. Travis Kvapil was not disciplined by NASCAR after he was accused of domestic violence and placed on probation.
Speier takes issue with the fact that NASCAR neither suspended Busch nor parked driver Travis Kvapil in October of 2013 after Kvapil was accused of pulling his wife by the hair into a bedroom at their Mooresville, N.C., home and hitting her in the head when she resisted. (Kvapil was placed on two years probation and compelled to perform community service in exchange for a deferred prosecution agreement.) “It calls into question the enforcement policies exercised by NASCAR,” Speier writes. Rather than wait for Dover police to complete its investigation, she urges NASCAR and SHR to “suspend Mr. Busch from his weekend’s Championship and adopt a policy going forward in all domestic violence cases to suspend drivers until criminal proceedings end or there is a clear lack of evidence.”
Speier has also asked to be looped into the internal investigations of NASCAR and SHR, and for “a history of sanctions levied by NASCAR and racing teams for domestic violence incidents brought to your attention over the last five years.”
On Friday, NASCAR CEO Brian France was asked about Speier’s letter. In the wake of the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice situation, Speier asked for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to resign.
“What’s not lost on us by any stretch is the rightful heightened awarenes on domestic abuse and violence and so you can expect our policies to reflect the understandable awareness that that’s not going to be tolerated,” France said.
“The past of how any league might have handled some of this is one thing. It’s pretty clear when you see what’s happening around the country and in some of the other leagues that our policy will reflect the significance and importance that it should.”
France also said that NASCAR wouldn’t step in and punish Busch, if necessary, until the investigation was complete. Last weekend at Phoenix, Stewart-Haas co-owner Gene Haas said he wasn’t going to pull Busch from the car.
“Well, two things,” France said. “One is there are charges that are levied against, in this case, a driver, and then there is a judicial hearing of some sort that would come after that. We’re not even at the first stop yet. That’s going to happen when and if charges are filed, and if charges are filed, that will change our equation, and we will look at that. As I said earlier on, we realize the heightened awareness of this important topic, and our policies will reflect that as we go down – they’ll reflect how serious it is. You know us well enough to know when we say that, we mean it, and we’ll figure it out. But we ought to have a process that gets to the bottom of the facts before anybody does anything.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
