Kyle Busch appeared live on the Pat McAfee Show Friday from Indianapolis and pledged “payback’s coming” to Corey LaJoie after their incident last weekend.
Busch went in depth about the incident from Pocono Raceway where LaJoie hit his No. 8 Chevrolet in the left rear going into Turn 1. The contact spun the Richard Childress Racing driver with 40 laps to go. The field was fanning out on a restart where Busch was the lowest driver to the left on the racetrack.
As he explained, Busch blocked LaJoie. The contact came when LaJoie hit Busch in the left rear as he moved back toward the right to make the arch into the corner.
“Instead of just blending in behind me and making sure that he doesn’t crash the whole field, he clips me,” Busch said. “That’s like stupid. What are we doing? We’re going 190 miles an hour, and we’re going to wreck each other?”
Busch didn’t have much to say in the crash’s immediate aftermath. Once cleared from the infield care center, Busch told reporters it didn’t matter what he thought when asked if LaJoie had been too aggressive. But he did acknowledge trying to block LaJoie’s run and that “some don’t lift.”
“Nah,” Busch said at Pocono about needing to have a conversation with LaJoie.
“He texted me and then he called me,” Busch told McAfee. “I didn’t even reach back out because he changed his story four times, so I’m like, ‘You’re just a liar. You wrecked me.’ I get it. It’s fine. Whatever. Payback’s coming.”
In talking to NASCAR.com after the race, LaJoie said a driver has to take momentum when they have it on a restart. LaJoie felt Busch blocked him twice, and he had a run after getting a shove from AJ Allmendinger.
“I was anticipating our bumpers lining up and then pushing him forward and him taking the lane,” LaJoie said. “But he blocked again when I had more position on him and spun him out. … You have to be super-aggressive on restarts and sometimes you’re the windshield and sometimes you’re the bug.”