NASCAR does not currently believe there was anything nefarious about the incident on Sunday at Pocono Raceway between Corey Lajoie and Kyle Busch but are giving it due diligence in their Tuesday meetings.
The incident occurred during a restart on Lap 120. Busch blocked a run from below from Lajoie. Busch made a second move and, at best, Lajoie didn’t lift and at worst turned the two-time champion.
Busch spun towards traffic and collected Ryan Preece, Harrison Burton, AJ Allmendinger and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Speaking on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Tuesday morning, NASCAR Cup Series managing director Brad Moran doesn’t expect a penalty for Lajoie.
“We believe it was hard racing but we’ll be talking about it more later today like anything that rises to capture our attention,” Moran said. “It got our attention and we reviewed it a couple of times during the race after it happened but we’ll take a deeper dive into the video, the audio and the SMT. As of now, we believe it was hard racing and a couple of guys not giving each other room. Sitting here right now, we don’t think it was anything intentional but we’ll give it due diligence.”
A day after the crash, Lajoie gave a breakdown on his Stacking Pennies podcast why he felt the incident played out the way it did.
“I do feel bad even for Kyle,” LaJoie said. “I don’t wanna end his day. Randall Burnett, like, we’re buddies. I don’t wanna wreck anybody’s day. So, here watching the in-car of the 8 is what makes it make more sense in my mind of how it all went down. OK, you hear how much he was on the chip there? So, when you’re that deep in traffic, you’re in between grabbing fourth and fifth gear.
“And I was planning on trying to kind of blend back behind him but at the same time, I was committed to kind of fill and get behind him is when he was in the chip. … The amount that he was in the chip, I didn’t anticipate his car losing that momentum relative to mine. I spun him out, took out several good cars behind me which I do feel bad about on Monday.”