“I Don’t Feel Sorry”: Kyle Busch Has a Blunt Take On Martin Truex Jr.’s Disaster in the Making

After a disastrous season in 2022, Kyle Busch roared back to form in 2023 in his first season at Richard Childress Racing. An even bigger redemption story though has been his former teammate Martin Truex Jr., who went from missing the playoffs entirely last season to taking the regular season championship this time around. But after devastating outings in Darlington and Kansas, Truex is on the verge of going out in the first round itself. Does Kyle Busch have any sympathy for the #19 driver? Clearly not.

Ahead of the first playoff elimination race at Bristol, Busch opened up on the regular season champion bowing out in the first round, and if he feels there is a need to bring a change in the system to prevent this scenario.

Kyle Busch has no sympathy for Martin Truex Jr.’s plight

At the media interaction, the RCR driver was asked how he felt overall about a system where the regular season champion fails to make it to the round of 12 and if he has a problem with it.

“It’s a hard one to argue you know, we were third in points and we had, call it four out of six weeks go bad and we’re down to 11th in points so, I don’t feel sorry for them. It sucks. It’s this time of year it happened to us as well too you know.”

“We could have won the regular season championship if it wasn’t for four bad weeks in six weeks you know.”

Truex is currently 7 points below the cutline and requires a win or a decent result coupled with some luck going his way with other drivers’ results if he wants to climb out of this hole. Busch, on the other hand, sits in a better position at 5th and is 24 points above the cut-off, but by no means he can take Bristol for granted.

Kyle Busch has a cheeky answer on his own championship ambitions now

Heading into the playoffs, most fans and analysts had Martin Truex Jr. as a guarantee for the championship 4, a prediction that looks in increasing jeopardy now. Busch was also asked about the overall playoff outlook in case the 2017 Cup Series champion exits at Bristol.

The two-time Cup Series champ had a tongue-in-cheek answer, bringing up his own progression chances being downplayed by most analysts.

“I think you could kind of see the #19 as the final four guy so that I think that opens the door for someone to get in there. I think there were a lot of playoff brackets chosen without the #8 car making it out of the 16. Probably not very many of them had the #19 out either, so it’s going to blow up a lot of them.”

With drivers like Martin Truex Jr., Kevin Harvick, and Joey Logano still on the verge of elimination and even Kyle Busch not yet safe, Bristol indeed promises to be a great spectacle for the fans.