NASCAR: The irony of Kyle Busch’s Darlington face mask

It’s almost as if Kyle Busch’s face mask predicted that he would wreck Chase Elliott and ruin his chances of securing his first win of the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season.

While the move may have seemed blatant based on literally every camera angle that Fox could have possibly shown, it was clear based on Kyle Busch’s reaction to his wrecking of Chase Elliott late in Wednesday night’s Toyota 500 NASCAR Cup Series race at Darlington Raceway that he simply made a huge misjudgment.

A misjudgment you’d expect from a 12-year-old in go-karts as opposed to a two-time Cup Series champion and the winningest NASCAR driver of all-time, but a non-malicious misjudgment nonetheless.

Elliott was in position to win this race on newer tires compared to Busch in second place and leader Denny Hamlin after giving up the lead to pit during the previous caution flag period.

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He dropped to sixth place but quickly made his way back up to third before sailing past Busch for second when the contact happened that knocked him out of the race, sending him to 38th place and netting him just one point after he appeared poised to find victory lane for the first time since winning at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval last September.

After the incident happened, the rain started to fall, so it’s all but a sure thing that the 24-year-old Dawsonville, Georgia native what would have won the race had his #9 Chevrolet not received completely unnecessary contact from Busch’s #18 Toyota in that split-second.

What would been his seventh career victory was literally thrown in the trash by Busch’s misjudgment.

Fortunately, Busch’s face mask “knew” that this was going to happen all along, and it had a message ready for the distraught Elliott and all of the distraught fans out there.

Busch apologized for the wreck multiple times — in his post-race interview, in his post-race Zoom conference and on his Twitter account — although he admitted that he understood there would be repercussions for the move down the road, as there should be.

And so did his face mask.

During his post-race interview, the 35-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada’s face mask was on full display (as is now mandatory for NASCAR amid the coronavirus pandemic).

Busch’s face mask contained several different state license plates, and the message on Ohio’s was quite fitting for the situation.

“4GIVE ME”

Take a look.

So does Elliott 4GIVE HIM?

Not yet, I would venture to guess.

We shall see if Chase Elliott 4GIVES Kyle Busch when NASCAR next races, or at least sometime in the near future. The next race on the Cup Series schedule is the Coca-Cola 600, which is scheduled to take place this Sunday, May 24 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. It is set to be broadcast live on Fox beginning at 6:00 p.m. ET.