On one hand, consider the platform and the possibility that Kyle Busch was playing into the Pat McAfee Show audience when discussing what happened with Corey Lajoie last week at Pocono.
On the other hand, the two-time Cup Series champion called Lajoie a ‘liar’ and vowed that payback was coming during his weekly segment on the popular ESPN talk show with the former NFL kicker and WWE commentator.
Busch crashed in Turn 1 off the nose of Corey Lajoie on a restart with 40 laps remaining. Busch blocked a run from Lajoie, who didn’t lift, and the second perceived block resulted in the contact that resulted in the crash.
The byproduct of their racing incident is that Busch came back up the track and knocked into AJ Allmendinger, Harrison Burton, Ryan Preece and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. It completely destroyed the Preece car.
Busch didn’t mince words when talking about the matter with McAfee.
“He texted me and then he called me,” Busch said. “I didn’t even reach back out because he changed his story four times, so I’m like, ‘you’re just a liar. You wrecked me.’ I get it. It’s fine. Payback is coming.”
Lajoie said he ‘had to take the run,’ and that Busch contributed to the crash as well with the blocks but the two-time champion wasn’t having any of it on Friday morning.
“We were on a restart, we’re all kind of fanning out at Pocono down the front straightaway. … So, I’m over to the right, I just shoot off the screen and that’s Corey to my inside,” Busch said. “And I was blocking him, but we’re already — I’m five-wide and you’ll see down here at the bottom right of the screen, the yellow line starts coming up and Corey’s like, ‘well I got to back on the racetrack.’ Instead of just blending in behind me and making sure he doesn’t crash the whole field, he just clips me. That’s just like stupid. What are we doing. We’re going 190 miles an hour into that corner and we’re going to wreck each other?”
Busch expressed frustration with a large portion of the entire field amidst a two month stretch where he’s been involved in several crashes, while also conceding it might be a byproduct of him being in the way.
“I don’t have faith in any of them,” Busch said. “… I mean, I’ve been wrecked five out of the last seven races by somebody, so I don’t have faith. Maybe I’m just slow and I’m in the way and they know I’m slow, so I’m an easy guy to pass, so they just want to knock me out.”
Busch is currently suffering through a 42-race winless streak, the longest of his career, and is 102 points out of a provisional playoff spot, likely needing to win his way into the Round of 16.
When asked if his cars ‘suck,’ Busch conceded ‘our cars are not very good right now.’