Dale Earnhardt Jr. heard the explanation but it just doesn’t make a lick of sense to him.
Kyle Busch bounced off the wall, successfully slowed to avoid hitting Ross Chastain but almost to a complete stop, and NASCAR officials deemed that the two-time Cup Series wasn’t involved in a crash. NASCAR put him back in fourth, where he was before the incident happened.
Now, it ultimately was a moot point because Busch was then involved in the next restart’s crash and that eliminated him from contention with a 27th place finish but Earnhardt, speaking on his Dale Jr Download podcast is puzzled about the precedence of it all.
“I don’t understand how he gets it back,” Earnhardt said. “I watched the guy go up and hit the wall. I know he didn’t drive into the wreck, he didn’t hit the one car that was spinning out in front of him, but he did go up the racetrack, make contact with the outside wall. In that moment for me, he’s in the wreck.”
It was a pretty common consensus throughout the industry too but Earnhardt said they’ve made similar calls in the past, including one involving Clint Bowyer at Watkins Glen, in which Earnhardt was put back behind the destroyed car and it made no sense to him.
“That was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit today,” Earnhardt said. “I don’t care what you tell me. I watched a guy crash into the wreck. He’s done. He’s going to finish in the back. No way his ass gets put back in his position like nothing happened to him.”
“I don’t know what NASCAR is thinking there. I got nothing against Kyle Busch. I’m a believer they get a win, they get themselves in the playoffs. I’m a believer that they’re absolutely still capable of doing all that, but no matter who it is in that scenario I don’t understand NASCAR’s reasoning.
“I watched the guy go up and hit the wall. In my mind, in that moment he’s in the crash. The contact with the wall is the trigger that he’s now involved. …That doesn’t jive with the last 30 years or 40 years of racing that I’ve watched.”
