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For a rare NASCAR article, this one is a biggie.
Last night in the Camping World Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway, “the line was crossed”, so to speak.
Kyle Busch in his own #18 Toyota was racing Ron Hornaday in the #33 Chevy that was running for the championship in the series. Both of them made it three wide in turn two after coming up on the lapped truck of Johnny Chapman, who quite frankly is to this race what Charlie Kimball is to the Indianapolis 500. If you want to see where my analogy comes from, please read this entry.
With how this three-wide deal, even for a split second, affects the aerodynamics on the trucks, it seems that one of those trucks was bound to get hairy.
And it was Hornaday’s.
Ron, who is a former four-time champ of the series, got loose (or the rear tires slipped out from under him) in the center of the turn, ran up into Kyle, and they both tagged the wall.
Caution is out by the time both damaged trucks hit the backstretch.
Busch, obviously and understandably displeased, runs up the tailgate of Hornaday’s truck, and sends him head-on into the wall in turn three. Busch wrecked his own truck in the process.
This is where the proverbial shit hits the fan.
Kyle, who has had history of immature on-track behavior, was parked for the rest of the night.
In a move not seen since 2005 for the higher-up division, NASCAR has parked Busch for the rest of the weekend. That means Kyle won’t be in the Nationwide race, or in the Sprint Cup race, where he is amongst the twelve men running for the title in “The Chase”.
While I’m not surprised, I am really disappointed in the man also known as “Shrub”.
The younger Busch brother (whose older brother Kurt is a former Sprint Cup champion), has had one of those seasons where when it looked like he was going to be a role model, he achieves something so stupid it really brings home the moniker, “one step forward, two steps backward.”
Let’s all go back to the Showtime Southern 500 Sprint Cup race from Darlington in South Carolina.
Kyle, who had been racing with Kevin Harvick in the #29 quite hard, sent Harvick careening into not only Kevin’s teammate Clint Bowyer (who wrecked), but also got spun from the right rear fender as well. That usually means WAR!
Post-race, Kevin got out of his car (engine shut off) to show his displeasure to Busch. Kyle wants none of it, and punts Harvick’s car right into the pit road wall, with no one at the wall and no engine on. The actions of both men would slap them with four-race probation periods.
Now let’s all go back to Texas.
Hornaday’s truck is owned by KHI, or Kevin Harvick Incorporated. Delana, who is Kevin’s wife, is the written owner of the truck. The team was going for the truck title, but now is officially out of the hunt following the on-track skirmish.
While the inadvertent ironies are enough for this angle, I will say this: Kyle better step up, or step aside. A man boy with too much talent should be focusing on the big picture, not on wrecking people he doesn’t race with on a regular basis. It also wouldn’t hurt sometimes to check your ego at the door when it’s time to eat humble pie.
Oh, did I tell you the last man NASCAR parked for the weekend in Cup was Kyle’s older brother Kurt for “blowing too much”? When I mean that, I mean DWI kids.
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