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Kyle Busch ran up front for much of the August 24 NASCAR Cup Series night race at Daytona and led the field across the start-finish line on the white-flag lap with his former teammate Christopher Bell right behind. No reason to believe that the No. 20 car wouldn’t give the No. 8 a good shove and get him out in front, to at least allow the Joe Gibbs Racing car a chance to make his own move for the win.
It never happened. Instead, Harrison Burton received a massive push from Parker Retzlaff and used that momentum to surge out to the lead on the final trip around the Florida high banks before he made an aggressive block on the two-time champion coming out of the final turn, which ultimately proved the difference between victory and defeat. It worked and the 23-year-old secured his first career Cup win, and more significantly, the 100th victory for the storied Wood Brothers Racing organization.
Burton no doubt blocked Busch. Some questioned if it was legal because he was around the double yellow line on the bottom. It was all legal. And it was a move to win the race. And it did. But Busch said something in his post-race interview on NBC that suggested it could have ended differently.
“Once they got in front with as little energy as there was with the lack of cars that there were, it was hard to make anything happen from Turn 4 to start-finish,” he said. “Besides just flat-out wrecking him, there was nothing else I could do.”
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“Besides just flat-out wrecking him.”
Those words are fresh in Kyle Busch’s and everyone else’s minds after that exact scenario X 2 played out a few weeks ago at the August 11 Richmond race with his RCR teammate Austin Dillon.
That final lap included a pair of incidents, first with the No. 3 car driving it deep into Turn 3 and into the rear of the No. 22 of Joey Logano before turning left and hooking Denny Hamlin, who violently slammed into the outside wall. Dillon slid underneath and beat Tyler Reddick to the finish line.
The RCR driver was awarded the win. However, since taking the checkered flag, NASCAR penalized the 34-year-old for those pair of moves, allowing him to keep the win but losing all the valuable things that typically come with it, including an automatic berth in the playoffs. The team appealed that ruling and it was denied.
The case will conclude on August 26 with a final ruling from the Final Appeal Officer Bill Mullis.
Kyle Busch Surprises Unsuspecting Daytona Fan
Kyle Busch raced clean and didn’t wreck Burton. As a result, he didn’t win in what was a great opportunity to extend his record-setting streak of winning at least one race a year to 20 in a row. With so much success for so long, he’s developed one of NASCAR’s largest fan bases.
During the weekend at Daytona, the driver and his wife rolled through the streets and rolled up behind one of his fans driving a truck that had multiple No. 8 stickers.
“We’re drafting. It’s in Daytona,” Busch said as he followed the truck closely. “No better place than to get tucked up tight.”
“He doesn’t like the outside lane. He’s moving left,” the driver described as the fan turned on his turn signal and moved over to the left lane. Then, Busch honked his horn a couple of times, rolled down his window and shook his fist at the unsuspecting fan, who then rolled down his window and shouted hello to the driver.
“Yeah boy!” Busch shouted at the end of the video.
Kyle Busch rolls his way on and off the track. His loyal fans love it. And NASCAR is better for it.
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