NASCAR: Kyle Busch penalized before Road America

Kyle Busch is set to start Sunday afternoon’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Road America from the rear of the field following an engine change.

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch will not get to start Sunday afternoon’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Road America, the Kwik Trip 250 presented by JOCKEY Made in America, where he qualified on Saturday afternoon.

Following the qualifying session around the 14-turn, 4.048-mile (6.515-kilometer) natural terrain road course in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, the #18 team decided to make an engine change.

The team elected to make the change after discovering an RPM issue on a downshift during the qualifying session.

Busch initially qualified for the 62-lap race in 13th place behind the wheel of his #18 Toyota. He is now set to drop to the rear of the field on the pace laps, and everybody who had been set to line up behind him on the inside lane is set to move up a row. As a result, he is set to take the green flag in 37th (last).

Through the first 17 races of the season, Busch, who remains without a contract for 2023, sits in fourth place in the point standings with a victory in the dirt race at Bristol Motor Speedway. He has six top five finishes and is tied for the series lead with 11 top 10 finishes.

Here is the starting lineup for Sunday’s race, following Busch’s penalty.

Starting lineup
1st – Chase Elliott
2nd – Chase Briscoe
3rd – Kyle Larson
4th – Tyler Reddick
5th – Austin Cindric
6th – Michael McDowell
7th – Chris Buescher
8th – Alex Bowman
9th – Joey Hand
10th – Cole Custer
11th – Brad Keselowski
12th – Ross Chastain
13th – Martin Truex Jr.
14th – Denny Hamlin
15th – Daniel Suarez
16th – Christopher Bell
17th – Ryan Blaney
18th – Joey Logano
19th – A.J. Allmendinger
20th – Austin Dillon
21st – Harrison Burton
22nd – Kurt Busch
23rd – Bubba Wallace
24th – Aric Almirola
25th – Erik Jones
26th – Josh Bilicki
27th – William Byron
28th – Kevin Harvick
29th – Cody Ware
30th – Ty Dillon
31st – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
32nd – Todd Gilliland
33rd – Corey LaJoie
34th – Justin Haley
35th – Kyle Tilley
36th – Loris Hezemans
37th – Kyle Busch

Tune in to USA Network at 3:00 p.m. ET tomorrow afternoon for the live broadcast of the Kwik Trip 250 presented by JOCKEY Made in America from Road America. Begin a free trial of FuboTV today if you have not yet done so!