DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Kyle Busch was involved in a hard crash during Friday’s lone practice at Daytona International Speedway when his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota appeared to suffer a right-rear tire failure.
Busch, 31, had completed 15 laps during the session but was making a run after coming to the garage for changes to his car. The tires on the car at the time of the incident reportedly had only four laps on them.
He was running just behind JGR teammate, and Daytona 500 winner, Denny Hamlin and ahead of teammates Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards when he crashed.
“It wasn’t any fun, that’s for sure,” Busch said after being evaluated and released from the infield care center. “Your first instinct is to correct and the car automatically corrects and then finally when it catches or when it hit the apron and caught, it just turned back the other way and head on into the fence.
“That was certainly a big hit, so you have to thank NASCAR for their safety advancements in the cars and the drivers’ equipment and things like that. Of course the SAFER barrier as well. That could have certainly been a lot worse than it was.”
The right-front of his car took the brunt of the impact when it crashed hard into the outside wall, and the team will need to go to a backup. No other cars were involved.
Goodyear officials said a gash was found in the right-rear tire during its post-crash evaluation of the incident.
Only a handful of teams had made it out on the track on Thursday before rain cut short that day’s session. Friday morning’s practice was the only on-track time for teams before qualifying for Saturday’s Coke Zero 400 (7:45 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR).
“That was a hard hit from where I could see,” Hamlin said on NBCSN. “Just looked like a cut tire. Went in there, got loose and went the other way. (We were) just trying to log some laps, get some data (and) figure out what we could run as a group.”
Hamlin said his team had not seen any tire issues, but “I think the 19 (of Edwards) had one go down, a left rear I think, earlier in practice but nothing like that.”
Edwards said he noticed a vibration in his car during the team’s first morning run, “so I pulled in.”
“I thought it was the driveline (or) engine,” Edwards said. “We had a puncture in the tread of the left-rear tire. It was leaking, it was five or 10 pounds low when I came in.
“So we got everything back together and went out as a group and going into Turn 1 about four laps into the run, it was Matt in front of me and then Kyle in front of him and then I saw something come out from under Matt’s car and I thought ‘I wonder what that is?’ Then I saw Kyle sideways and … he drilled the fence. Honestly he hit hard enough (that) I was really worried about him.”