NASCAR: Kyle Busch admits he was in Kevin Harvick’s way but issues warning
By Asher Fair
Following the 20th race of the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season, Kyle Busch admitted that he was in Kevin Harvick’s way, but he also issued a warning.
With seven laps to go in the 20th race of the 36-race 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season, the Foxwoods Resort Casino 301, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick used his #4 Ford to move the #18 Toyota of Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch out of the way in turn one of New Hampshire Motor Speedway to take the lead of the race before going on to win it.
Harvick ended up finishing the 301-lap four-turn, 1.058-mile (1.703-kilometer) New Hampshire Motor Speedway oval in Loudon, New Hampshire a total of 1.877 seconds ahead of Busch in second place to claim his sixth victory of the season.
Here is a video of the exciting finish of the race.
Just over three weeks ago, Busch and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Kyle Larson were bumping and banging for the victory in the Overton’s 400 at Chicagoland Speedway. Busch ended up spinning Larson in turn three of the four-turn oval before getting into the wall himself. Busch still managed to win the race, and Larson still managed to finish in second place 1.875 seconds behind Busch in his #42 Chevrolet.
When Busch was booed by the fans after emerging victorious from his car, he responded be saying, “If you don’t like that kind of racing, don’t even watch.”
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While it was thought by many that he only shared these thoughts as a result of the fact that he won the race, he was not nearly as animated following the finish of the Foxwoods Resort Casino 301 as many thought he would be since he didn’t win the race after a contact-filled final few laps during which he was the driver who was moved out of the way as opposed to the driver who actually won the race.
Busch came right out and admitted that he was in Harvick’s way. However, he also issued a warning for the future. Here is what he had to say about the matter, according to Motorsport.com.
"“We controlled the restart and drove away by a little bit, but we weren’t the best car on the long run. All them SHR (Stewart-Haas Racing) cars were really, really good today. They were all fast, so it was going to be hard to hold them off and I was just kind of backing up and, you know, three, four, five corners in a row and with a faster car, I’m not sure he (Harvick) had to do it, but he did. It’s fine.“How you race is how you get raced, so it’s fine.”“Well, [Harvick] did that because of Chicago. I think that, you know, he had a fair game. Everybody has fair game on Kyle Busch – that’s for sure when it comes to the fan base, so, you know, that’s fine.“That’s how they want to race, that’s how I’ll race back, but, you know, it was just a bump. I mean, it wasn’t a big deal. He didn’t wreck me or anything like that, so he did it early enough, but he did it way harder and pushed me out of the groove three lanes and it just takes you so long to recover here that it was just no possible way I could get back to him, so – and I was slower anyways.“I was in the way, so no harm, no foul.”"
Busch handled this situation with more class than he has been known to handle situations such as these in the past. While he also issued a warning in addition to admitting that he was in Harvick’s way, his warning is a fair warning that pretty much all NASCAR Cup Series drivers abide by anyway.
Busch knows that what Harvick did was legal, and he knows that he, too, has raced drivers hard in the final few laps of races, most recently Larson at Chicagoland. He just wants to make sure that everyone knows what to expect moving forward.
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Do you believe that Kyle Busch handled the situation involving him and Kevin Harvick with class following the conclusion of the 2018 Foxwoods Resort Casino 301? Was this how you expected Busch to respond to being moved out of the way by Harvick before Harvick went on to take the victory?