BRISTOL, Tenn. – Kyle Busch’s remarkable charge from a Lap 2 accident in Saturday night’s Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race became suddenly subdued after Busch made contact with “Big 3” contender Martin Truex on Lap 432 of 500.
Finding himself back on the lead lap at the end of Stage 2, Busch’s 85-lap charge through the field found himself on the back bumper of Truex for second when he misjudged his move on the Furniture Row Racing driver and made contact with his left-rear corner sending Truex’s No. 78 5hour ENERGY Toyota around on the frontstretch.
Truex than bounced back onto the track in Turn 1 and collected JJ Yeley who hammered the outside 1 wall in his No. 7 New York Steakhouse Chevrolet.
After climbing from his race car, Truex kicked his mangled Toyota Camry before making the mandatory trip to the infield care center where he was quickly evaluated and released.
A calm Truex emerged from the care center and gave his viewpoint of the accident.
“I just got hit in the left rear. Pretty simple,” said Truex. “It’s a shame. We had a good night going. Started off rough. Battled hard and got the car pretty good there. I don’t know, I just got hit in the left rear.”
Truex struggled with the handling of his Barney Visser-owned Toyota – but when as the sun set at Bristol, the handling came around and Truex began his march forward.
Being patient on a Lap 360 restart, Truex wishes he would have pressed then-leader Clint Bowyer for the top spot and potentially could avoid the contact with Busch.
For that, Truex took some responsibility for his 30th place finish.
“It’s hard racing at Bristol,” Truex added. “The corner exit’s really slick where the VHT wore out. There’s some real slick patches. I’m sure he (Kyle Busch) hit one of them. Probably didn’t obviously do it on purpose, but it’s hard Bristol racing. Probably could’ve shown a little bit more patience. He was a lot faster than me at that point in time.
“He just caught me and probably another lap or so he would’ve went right by. Half his fault, half my fault for following the 14 (Clint Bowyer) so long. I should’ve knocked his butt out of the way because he held me up for 15-20 laps and burnt my front tires off screwing with him. Played too nice and got the crappy end of the stick.”
The 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series bookended a tough year in Thunder Valley. In April, he crashed out the race and finished 30th after completing 458 laps.
“It’s just Bristol,” added Truex. “Trying to get that first short track win. This place has been so hard on us. I mean I can’t even explain it to you how good we’ve run here in the past three or four years and crap like this every single time. It’s like just one thing after another. Sucks that it happened, but at the end of the day it’s racing at Bristol.
“I feel like I probably should’ve took the lead there. I probably should’ve bumped the 14 (Clint Bowyer) out of the way just to get the lead and I wouldn’t have been in that position. Sometimes you’re the nice guy and you get knocked out of the way. We’ll just have to race him a little harder next time.”
Busch’s night quickly turned soon after the incident with Truex.
On the impending restart, Busch found himself battling Chris Buescher, Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin for a spot inside the top-five, but Buescher and Busch made contact and subsequently cut down tires of both cars.
Busch spun a lap later in Turn 3 and went two laps down. He finished 20th.
After the race, Busch said he felt terrible about the contact with Truex and took full responsibility for the crash.
“Totally my fault, man, I feel terrible about that,” offered Busch. “Obviously I just misjudged it by a little bit – four inches, six inches, whatever and I got in the gas and was coming up off the corner and was going to slide in behind him (Martin Truex Jr.) and I didn’t think I was next to him yet and I clipped him and sent him for a whale of a ride.
“Hopefully, he’s alright and everything is okay there. I hated that I clipped him, I know he could have had a good shot to win the race too.”
On his late race troubles, Busch said, “We probably finished where we should have anyways with as torn up as our race car is. We had a shot to be able to come back there and win the race realistically. If it wasn’t for getting mixed up with the 37 (Chris Buescher) and the 48 (Jimmie Johnson), if I could have got clear of them, I think I could have got to the front.
“But Monday morning quarterback also says that if we would have inherited fourth and not pitted on that last pit stop then we might have been ahead of all that. I don’t know, we were certainly going to way overachieve tonight, but we just didn’t get to.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
