A complaint that drivers in NASCAR have always had is that the officiating body doesn’t listen to them on crucial matters. This has led to many junctures of extreme tension over the years. One such peak moment came to be during the 2021 Foxwood Resorts Casino 300 in New Hampshire. The main protagonist in the heavy drama was Kyle Busch.
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The Cup Series event was the fifth-last one in that year’s regular season and was to be held under tough weather conditions. Trouble arose when officials decided to wave the green flag despite there being mist on the race track. Rain began falling hard as soon as the race began and went on despite drivers complaining to their teams that the conditions were not optimal for racing.
As the field entered Turn 1 in Lap 3, the cars began losing control one after the other. Race leader Busch slid and tagged the wall first. Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr., and others followed similarly. The damage to Busch’s No. 18 car was bad enough to end his day altogether. This infuriated him and he raced forward to repeatedly hit the back of the official pace car.
His car totaled, but the promotion refused to let him continue in the backup car. The driver turned his wrath to the media and went on a long rant.
He told NBC Sports, “We started the race under a mist – we never should’ve went green to begin with. But then it kept getting worse and worse, lap by lap. The lap before, I went into 1 and it shoved the nose really bad and I was able to keep it under control.”
OH MY GOODNESS.
It started raining at @NHMS and many people, including race leader Kyle Busch, started wrecking. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/N5cAQp8UpK
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) July 18, 2021
Following a few seconds of explanation, he stopped himself short and said, “There’s no sense in saying what I want to say. It doesn’t do you any good.”
Truex Jr. and Hamlin echoed these sentiments as well. The pace car was damaged to a great extent as well and had to be replaced for the race to continue. NASCAR representatives later joined the cameras to defend themselves.
NASCAR’s Vice President of Competition at the time, Steve O’Donnell, told the press that the pace car driver Kip Childress had given them the clear to start the race.
They had asked him to investigate the scenes when reports of mist began coming in, but it’d been too late by then. Just as the yellow flag was getting ready to come out, Busch was already loose.
O’Donnell said, “I’ve been here a number of years. That’s the first time I’ve seen that in terms of how quickly it came upon us. Certainly mist, we’ve raced in mist conditions before. The track got slick, obviously, in a hurry and it was unfortunate what took place.” Surprisingly, Busch wasn’t penalized further for his frustration against the pace car.
