Even Kurt Busch is surprised that NASCAR didn’t penalize his brother, two-time Cup Series champion, Kyle Busch.
The 2004 Cup Series champion, who won his title with Roush Racing, appeared on the Door, Bumper, Clear podcast this week and was asked about the penalty to Ryan Preece due to the incident with Ty Gibbs two weeks ago at Texas but also the non-penalty for his brother’s contact with John Hunter Nemechek.
Ultimately, NASCAR officials indicated that they were convinced of intent due to what Preece said over the radio, that when he got back to Gibbs, he was ‘done’ with him. Gibbs wrecked off his nose but Preece said he merely refused to cut Gibbs a break due to how they have raced each other lately.
The elder Busch, a newly inducted Hall of Famer, did not like it.
“Well that’s the problem of the problem,” Kurt Busch said on the podcast on Monday. “NASCAR shouldn’t go off of what someone says on the radio. They should be able to still look at the eyeball test.”
Thus, using the eyeball test, the elder brought the younger brother warranted a penalty too.
“What my brother did to John Hunter was the same exact thing,” said Kurt. “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.”
Kurt was detailed a story of how what a driver says could be helpful and hurtful to the art of getting away with it.
“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,” Busch said. “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.”
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