There’s not much going right for Kyle Busch these days on the racetrack. And in Sunday’s AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway, it wasn’t even his fault.
Busch was running mid-pack during Stage 3 when contact between Josh Berry and Noah Gragson sent his No. 8 Chevrolet into the inside grass down the backstretch. Ross Chastain was running the top, things got tight between the four cars and it was Busch on the inside who paid the price.
Busch was not happy: “Un-fu*king believable,” he said, via Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic. Stuck in the grass, he added, “It’s fu*king fu*ked.”
Busch did not stop there. After his team informed him of what happened, he took aim at the trio of Berry, Gragson and Chastain.
“They’re all fu*king clowns. Every single one of ’em,” Busch said.
Busch appeared on Monday’s “Actions Detrimental” podcast alongside former Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin. He explained the incident, questioning what his competitors were doing in that moment.
“What the hell were they doing?” Busch said. “I mean, the 1 [Chastain] was running the top, but he was like four feet off the wall. Then the 21 [Berry] is all squiggly wiggly and hits the 4 [Gragson] and then the 4 bounces into me and spins me out. … I had PTSD of the Daytona crash. I was headed into the inside wall and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this again? Like, please rudder.’ So, I downshifted into second gear and the car’s going so slow, it’s just putzing along and then it ramps over the grass because I was trying to get the motor to turn back over by itself and it just stalled on the grass.”
It’s no secret that Busch has had his issues with the Next Gen car. The two-time Cup Series champion is riding a career-long 69-race winless streak. Though at times he’s shown signs of life this season, mistakes or misfortune have always seemed to come at the worst time. He finished P21 at Kansas, his third consecutive finish outside the top-20.
Furthermore, Busch said the composite body of the Next Gen car is playing a role in drivers’ decision making. He’d like to see how they’d fare in a steel body car.
“Anyways, we’re all clowns,” Busch said. “We all don’t know how to freaking drive. It’s the composite bodies, that’s what it is. Everybody just runs into everybody and runs over everybody and hits everybody, hits the wall because we all just bank on the fact that the body’s just gonna pop back out and we’re going to be fine. These clowns would not have any idea how to drive a steel body car. You touch the wall, and it plows. Put ’em back in the Gen 4 cars.”
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