Kyle Busch has finally spoken out about the brawl that he had with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. after the All-Star race last Sunday. The 2X Cup Series champion was assaulted near his team’s hauler by Stenhouse Jr. and members of his crew for intentionally wrecking the #47 JTG Daugherty Racing car during the race. Days after the incident, Busch has broken down his thoughts on the unsavory aftermath.
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He told Charlie Marlow in a conversation on former racer Kenny Wallace’s YouTube channel that he had been unaware about Stenhouse Jr. waiting for him along with his crew. He stated, “I had no idea of his comments of ‘Hold my watch’ or ‘Hey, if you want to see something afterwards hang out’, until afterwards. Nobody told me so I felt like I went into an ambush blind with him and his team.”
Despite the surprise attack, Busch did hold his own and is quite pleased with himself for that. “Tried to hold my own the best I could, fighting off five different guys and came out of there with no black eyes,” he added. Remarkably, he also mentioned that it had not been his intention to wreck the #47 out of contention and he just wanted to show his displeasure for being forced into the wall in Lap 1.
He contended that he had given enough room for Stenhouse Jr. to come up three-wide alongside him and Michael McDowell and yet had had his left-front brushed by the driver. “I wasn’t too pleased about that and did come back and retaliate,” he said. “Showed my displeasure of that. As one guy once said, I meant to rattle his cage and spin him out. Didn’t mean for him to overcorrect and stuff it in the fence.”
Kyle Busch on NASCAR fining drivers and crews for fighting on camera
NASCAR ruled this week that Stenhouse Jr. will be fined $75,000 for his behavior at the track and that several members of his crew who were involved in the incident will be suspended. Busch and his crew were let off without any punishment. Many in the stock car racing community have not taken well to this action because the sanctioning body used the very fight to promote itself on a spectacularly heavy basis on social media.
Talking about it, Busch underlined that NASCAR needs to have clearer rules about fighting. He said, “I still don’t know if there’s been any posts on NASCAR social that hasn’t had to deal with the fight since Sunday night. So, you know they’re promoting it but yet they don’t want us doing it or they penalize you for doing it.” He concluded that NASCAR wasn’t WWE and there ought to be no fighting hereon if the promotion cannot set up clear rules about it.
