While this race didn’t have any caution flags, there were incidents all over the track today. Kyle Busch was fed up with Christopher Bell and let him know it. The former Joe Gibbs Racing teammates did not see eye-to-eye after the finish of the NASCAR race at COTA.
Kyle Busch got spun around by Christopher Bell in Turn 1 and it sank Busch’s chances of a potential top-5 finish. Busch instead would bring his No. 8 Chevy home in P9 at the end of the race. Bell finished P2 to the winner, William Byron.
With the poor season Busch has had, I get why he’s upset. He finally had his first solid run since Atlanta going, and it was ruined. Bell had to be aggressive to make a run at Byron in this race, but it led to others paying the price.
In another angle of the incident, you can hear Kyle Busch ask Christopher Bell if he had ever wrecked him before. Then, he more or less promises that he will wreck him in the future. It will be interesting to see how, if, and when Busch gets his payback on his former teammate.
Despite being spun around on Lap 41, Busch was able to finish P9. He salvaged the most out of the situation and earned his second top-10 of the season. After three finishes of P22 or worse, this will be a welcomed result once Rowdy calms down a bit.
Kyle Busch gains a little momentum ahead of Richmond
Once the dust settles, this No. 8 team will be happy with how they performed this weekend. No major mistakes of their own doing on the track or on pit road. Things went smoothly, they had speed, and it all worked out as best as it could after that incident with Bell.
In four races at COTA, Busch has finished in the top-10 three times. His worst finish was in 2022 with Joe Gibbs Racing, P28. He was runner-up in 2023, so they knew they had a chance to contend heading into this race. It just wasn’t meant to be.
This is good going into Richmond, though. Richmond is one of Kyle Busch’s bread-and-butter tracks. He has six wins there and in his last 18 races at the track, only three of those finishes have been outside of the top-10. Between September 2017 and August 2022, Busch finished in the top-10 in ten straight races at the short track.
Last year at Richmond, Busch finished P14 and P3 in the two races. He qualified P2 in both of those efforts. A sign of what could be coming up for Rowdy and his team in just one week.
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