Kyle Busch fires back at ‘negative’ NASCAR tweet

Kyle Busch quickly fired back at NASCAR after they referenced his recent struggles in a tweet posted on Thursday evening.

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch opened up the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season with 11 top 10 finishes, including a victory in the dirt race at Bristol Motor Speedway, in the first 15 races.

Since then, he has hasn’t finished higher than 11th place.

Busch is currently riding a streak of eight straight finishes outside of the top 10. His most recent finish inside the top 10 came more than two months ago when he finished in second place at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway — before summer began.

NASCAR posted about his recent struggles, calling them “summer scaries”.

Busch responded within two minutes, stating, “Ah yes, the scheduled weekly negative post”.

https://twitter.com/KyleBusch/status/1557861273722929154

Unfortunately for Busch, the fact that this “negative post” could be considered weekly at this stage only further illustrates the fact that the #18 team can’t seem to catch a break.

Busch had the car to potentially win the race at Nashville Superspeedway before a bad call to pit for new tires ahead of the final restart. He had to settle for 21st place.

Then he finished in second place at Pocono Raceway, and while teammate and race winner Denny Hamlin was disqualified, so too was Busch — and for the same reason.

Most recently, he was caught up in a wreck started by a backmarker at Michigan International Speedway following an early pit stop. He had started the race in second place and Toyota clearly had the pace to be at the front all day long.

His average finish during this eight-race stretch is 24.38, and his best finish of 11th place ironically came in a road course race, which isn’t generally his strong suit.

Interestingly, if not for his win at Bristol Motor Speedway, where he led only the final lap after the top two drivers collided coming to the checkered flag, Busch would currently be outside of the provisional 16-driver playoff picture, despite the fact that he sits in eighth place in the point standings.

There have been 14 other winners this season, and two drivers above Busch in the standings aren’t among them.

This isn’t the first time that Busch has fired back at NASCAR following what he perceived to be a “negative” tweet. He notably did so after his third place finish at Darlington Raceway in May 2021.

The 37-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada native is still facing an uncertain future at Joe Gibbs Racing, as he is not under contract to drive the #18 Toyota beyond the conclusion of this season.

With Mars Wrigley out as primary sponsor after 2022, the team need to find significant funding to retain the two-time champion for what would be a 16th season. Unfortunately, what was once seen as a promising development recently ended up falling through.