This is the point of the Cup Series season where drivers who haven’t made it into the playoffs yet actually start fretting and begin making mistakes on the race track. Sunday’s race in New Hampshire displayed plenty of such errors and showcased some of the biggest names taking big hits to their qualifying chances. Prime amongst them were Kyle Busch and Joey Logano.
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Busch has already been battling a terrible season. Hopes were that he would be able to conjure up some magic at the Magic Mile and produce a good result. But things just went from bad to worse as he crashed three times during the race to finally end up with a DNF. The first wreck came courtesy of Noah Gragson and him trading paint in Lap 155 of the race.
#NASCAR Video: The troublesome summer continues for Kyle Busch and the No. 8 RCR team. While running a lap down, and outside of the top-30, Busch got loose and got into Noah Gragson, which sent both drivers spinning. Busch backed into the outside wall:https://t.co/rwBwchz8b7
— TobyChristie.com (@TobyChristieCom) June 23, 2024
Busch had been a lap down at that point of the race having started from 30th place. He got loose and drifted into Gragson’s ride after which both their cars spun. He was later caught in crashes on either side of the Stage 3 rain delay. The final nail in the coffin came when his car bizarrely shot up the track and into the wall just as the race was resuming after the delay.
Logano and Elliott restarted next to each other on Lap 194 when the former Mustang struggled to make the turn in the first corner. They ended up making contact and falling down the field. The Team Penske star finished at a lowly 32nd place. He is six points below the cutoff line as things stand. In another story, Bubba Wallace, also on the playoff bubble, suffered a DNF at the hands of Gragson.
Chris Buescher ends up benefiting the most from New Hampshire
RFK Racing driver Buescher secured a top-5 result (fifth place) at the Magic Mile. He too is fighting for a place in the playoffs having not secured a victory yet.
He told the press, “It’s not a win. But I guess coming into it, if you said we could have run Top 10 today, we certainly wouldn’t consider that a win. But that would have been a good day. For us to come here and come home with a Top 5, that’s definitely a really good day.”
Buescher is now in 13th place on the points table and 27 points above the playoff cutoff line. His next opportunity to win and be clear of any late regular-season chaos will come at the Nashville Superspeedway next Sunday. Until then, he can bask in the success of the last.
