Kurt Busch isn’t letting his brother Kyle slide on this one.
To the surprise of many, Kyle Busch wasn’t penalized for intentionally wrecking John Hunter Nemechek during a late race run-in earlier this month at Texas Motor Speedway. However, driver Ryan Preece was fined $50,000 and was even forced to forfeit 25 points for intentionally taking out Ty Gibbs.
The incident between Preece and Gibbs came during lap 101, when Preece appeared to drive into the back of the #54 car and send him spinning into the outside wall, bringing his race to an end. Interestingly enough, earlier in the race, Preece had voiced his frustration with Gibbs over the radio when the #54 car drove hard into turn one and slid up close to the his car, giving him no other choice to but to let off the gas.
That ended up costing him several spots, and Preece immediately took to the radio afterwards to vent about Gibbs:
“What a f***ing idiot that kid is. He is so lucky his car is so f***ing fast… When I get to that 54, I’m done with him. F***ing idiot. … I can’t stand when idiots like him have fast race cars that they can do stupid s**t and get away with it. End of rant.”
Later on in the race, there appeared to be some contact between Preece and Gibbs, and NASCAR apparently saw enough in the footage to slap the driver of the #60 car with a penalty:
Many have seen that footage and concluded that Preece getting assessed a penalty was not the right thing to do, especially since Kyle Busch wasn’t penalized for what he may or may not have done at the end of the very same race. One of the people that are in that boat? That’d be Kyle Busch’s older brother, Kurt.
While he was a guest on the Door Bumper Clear podcast, the retired NASCAR driver said that slapping Ryan Preece with a fine and a points deduction while his brother Kyle got away scot-free was absolutely wrong:
“That’s the problem of the problem. NASCAR shouldn’t go off of what someone says on the radio. They should be able to still look at the eyeball test.”
Clearly NASCAR just listened to what Preece said on the radio. That’s really the only difference between the Preece and Busch situations.
That’s how Kurt Busch sees it, and he believes that NASCAR should have done one of two things. Either both drivers shouldn’t have been penalized at all, or both Preece and Busch should have gotten hit with the exact same, disciplinary action:
“What my brother did to John Hunter was the same exact thing. And there could have been maybe one or two words. Now you’re in like a court room. You may have or you could have… you change one little word in a sentence. But to have Preece penalized and not my brother, I mean I have no problem saying it. They both should have been in the same doghouse, personally.”
I have to agree with Kurt Busch on this one
Why does the retired NASCAR driver feel so strongly about this? Well, it might have to do with how he lived through a similar situation during his racing career. Later on in the podcast, he explained how he was once fined for his actions out on the race track, and it was only after he said he intentionally did it that NASCAR brought the hammer down:
“There was an All-Star race where I think it was Dale Jr. won or Newman won, and I needed a yellow, so I wrecked Robby Gordon late in the race. And I didn’t say anything, but the yellow came out, we got another set of tires. And I still wasn’t quick enough to catch them. I think it was the year Jr. one. What was it, ’02?
Anyway, I was on a radio show Tuesday afterwards. I can’t remember what show it was, it could have been like 106.5 downtown. I was just off guard or it was early morning, I said, ‘Oh yeah, I wrecked him. I was just looking for a yellow because I needed one more shot, I wanted one more shot.’ On Wednesday, NASCAR issued me a $100,000 penalty. Docked points. Even though it was the All-Star race. And then Richard Childress wanted to fight me by Friday.”
So the lesson here is… NASCAR drivers can wreck others, as long as they don’t openly talk about it.
That’s at least how Kurt Busch sees it, and you can hear him talk more about it in the interview below:
