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Kyle Busch‘s path to a dominant day came to an early end with involvement in a multicar crash Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota sustained significant damage in the Lap 357 stack-up during the Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race, which was postponed to a Sunday start after Saturday evening showers stopped the event 48 laps in.
Busch had complained over his team radio for a number of laps about a possible broken shock affecting his car’s handling. Busch’s car finally let loose in Turn 1, where it was drilled by the No. 46 Chevrolet of Justin Allgaier, a late-hour substitute for the ailing Michael Annett.
Busch’s car limped behind the wall at the .533-mile track, done for the day and earmarked for a 39th-place finish after leading 256 laps.
“It finally did break and it was breaking, but it finally did break and I couldn’t hold onto it there and it spun out and then spun out the wrong way and it’s frustrating,” said Busch, the defending series champ and a four-time Sprint Cup winner this year.
“We’ve had really, really fast race cars here. The guys do a great job setting them up, but, man, we’ve got parts failures, you know? You can’t have parts failures in this business. That’s stupid. My Camrys have been fast.
“We’ve just got to stop making stupid mistakes that take us out of races and beyond that the 46 spotter needs to be fired and the damn driver, too. He’s an idiot. I’ve been wrecking for half a lap and they come through and clean us out. I mean, there’s plenty of room to miss me. Everybody else seemed to be able to do a good job of it.”
Allgaier, a NASCAR XFINITY Series regular for JR Motorsports, was tapped as a last-ditch fill-in by HScott Motorsports on Saturday as Annett battled flu-like symptoms. He wound up last in the 40-car field in his only Sprint Cup start of the season.
“The No. 22 (Joey Logano) ducked in front of me getting into (Turn) 1 and I had to jam on the brakes pretty hard,” said Allgaier, who apologized to Busch after exiting the No. 46 Chevy.
“I got really loose and I was just trying to catch it. That is when the spotter was telling me that the No. 18 was spinning and he kept rolling down the hill, so at first I committed to go below him because I was already on the bottom and then he was still coming down the hill so I tried to go out around the outside of him and unfortunately I just didn’t make it. The No. 22 was right there and just really a shame. I hate it for these guys.”
Martin Truex Jr. was also tangled up, sustaining minor damage in the stack-up before his involvement in a larger crash 15 laps later.