Kyle Busch is once again big mad about how a NASCAR race ended after he couldn’t get lucky in Las Vegas this weekend.
The No. 18 cruised to a fourth-place finish at the Pennzoil 400 in his hometown Sin City, but it once again was his post-race comments that caused the most stir.
After watching Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman take the checkered flag for his seventh career Cup Series race, Busch couldn’t help himself. He let out a profanity-laced rant, suggesting Bowman’s win was nothing but luck.
“The same (expletive) guy who backs into every (expletive) win that he ever (expletive) gets backs into another (expletive) win. Bull (expletive)!” Busch could be heard saying over his in-car audio, as transcribed by The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck.
It’s obviously harsh criticism and no doubt some sour grapes from a driver literally moments after seeing a furious comeback — Busch started from the back after a practice wreck — come up just short. That being said, it’s probably overstating things just a bit.
Bowman was among the three Hendrick cars that did grab a pit stop before the overtime laps began, but the trio each took two tires instead of four. That allowed Bowman, as well as Kyle Larson and William Byron, to beat the rest of the field off pit road. In the end, Bowman and Larson held off a hard-charging field on four fresh tires to duke it out for the win, with Bowman edging his teammate.
And, in the process, he might have gotten a new T-shirt idea out of the whole thing, as he suggested with a postrace tweet responding to Busch’s rant.
If Busch wanted to commiserate with anyone after Sunday’s race, he’d likely have a sympathetic ear from Denny Hamlin. It was just a few months ago that Hamlin called Bowman an “absolute hack who gets his ass kicked by his teammates every week” after a late-race dust-up at Martinsville.
