The Cup Series race at the Pocono Raceway on Sunday will be remembered for the Stage 3 accident between Corey LaJoie and Kyle Busch on Lap 121. The field was coming off a restart to Turn 1 when Busch blocked LaJoie to the left. Though there was no contact, LaJoie retaliated by hitting him in the left rear to send him spinning outside. Busch shot back up across the track and collected multiple cars.
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Both drivers were lined up in the midpack and were furthest to the left when the incident went down. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., A.J. Allmendinger, Harrison Burton, and Ryan Preece fell prey to it with no mistake of theirs. LaJoie expressed no regret for his action during his post-race interview and Busch chose not to open himself up completely. Back home, Denny Hamlin broke the sequence down on his podcast, Actions Detrimental.
He expressed his belief that LaJoie had dipped to the left only to be able to see where the corner was. He detailed that judging where the corner came up while racing midpack on tracks like Pocono was a challenging affair and LaJoie had been trying to do just that. However, he did admit that the driver not lifting off the gas while the others were and trying to make the field further wide was a mistake.
Hamlin compared this move to something Joey Logano did in 2022 at the Indianapolis Road Course. The 2X Cup Series champion caused a multiple-car wreck by trying to squeeze himself into the crowd in front during a restart and gain a good position. “If you think you’re going to stick it five wide bottom, you are content on just crashing whoever’s on the outside of you,” he said.
Hamlin details the mistake that LaJoie made in Pocono
What appeared weird to the Joe Gibbs Racing driver was LaJoie continuing to accelerate as the field approached the corner while everyone around him was reducing their speed to make the turn. He believes that being in the midpack, the No. 7 driver ought to have lifted off his gas earlier than the leaders to merge into the pack through the corner.
He added, “You see it on the highway. When you see merging happen, you usually see a stack up. Well, that means you have to back up your corner just a little bit there because everyone is trying to merge into just a couple of lanes in Turn 1.”
LaJoie had his own explanation for doing what he did and refused to apologize for the incident.
