INDIANAPOLIS -- Jimmie Johnson learned quickly not to let race track grudges linger. His second season on NASCAR's premier circuit, the Hendrick Motorsports driver was infuriated by the way Jeff Burton was banging into him. After the race, as Johnson and his crew stood inside the team transporter fuming, who should walk in but Burton himself.

"He walked into my truck past all my crew guys, and didn't apologize, but said, 'I wanted to knock you out of the way. I meant to do that,'" Johnson remembered. "I thought, that took a lot of [guts]. It was really respectful in a weird way to do that. I've always reached out to people."

Which brings us to the running feud between Johnson and Kurt Busch, who in three of the past four races have made contact on the track and traded words off it. There was an incident June 21 at Infineon Raceway, where Johnson wound up spinning Busch (watch video). There was bumping and banging between the two seven days later at New Hampshire. And two weeks ago at Chicagoland, Busch and Johnson got into each other late in the race, an incident that resulted in Busch falling back to 17th (watch video).

As of Friday morning, a peace summit between the two still had not occurred. At a tire test in Atlanta recently, Busch said he would speak with Johnson at Indianapolis. Johnson said Friday that he sent Busch a text message the night of the Chicago race, but it was never returned.

"It's not uncommon to not hear back," Johnson said. "I don't think a lot of people like talking about it. I think they'd rather bury it and save it for another moment when they can settle the score."

That didn't seem to be on Busch's agenda Friday.

"I felt like I would run into him, assuming -- so I guess that made the normal cliché out of assuming -- [Thursday] night at Jeff Gordon's bowling tournament," Busch said. "I thought we'd run into each other there, which we didn't. I think he had a charity function as well. I'll find him in the garage [Friday]. I felt like Chicago was definitely a heat-of-the-moment type of situation where it wasn't that big of a deal, and then to see everybody bombard us after we finished 17th, then I guess it was an issue. So we'll work on it, shake hands and laugh about it. I don't think it's that big of a deal where we even have to worry about it." (Continued)