After more than a stage and a half of racing in the Daytona 500—that’s 105 laps in new-NASCAR talk—a tire went down on Kyle Busch’s car and spun the No. 18 around, collecting bunch of cars and tearing them up. Afterward, Busch blamed and served a major burn to NASCAR’s “official” tire. That’ll be a nice fine.
Busch whipped right around upon the tire giving out on lap 45 of the second stage of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race, collecting his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Matt Kenseth, rookies Erik Jones and Ty Dillon, Elliott Sadler and Dale Earnhardt Jr. in a big wreck. Sadler somehow managed to come out of the thing in the lead, and the red flag came out for cleanup.
But the fun stuff came after the wreck.
Busch said in a post-wreck interview with FOX that he would have waved other cars around had he known that the tire would go down right there, but he wasn’t even sure which tire gave out on him. Then, Busch served a really hot burn to Goodyear, the “official” tire of NASCAR, live on television:
“Tore up three JGR cars in one hit, and also [Earnhardt] Jr.,” said Busch, who’s out of the race for the day since he had to go to the garage. “I feel bad, horrible, for those guys, but man, nothing that we did wrong. Obviously, Goodyear tires just aren’t very good at holding air.”
Take that one all the way to the bank, dude, because it was a good burn. And they’ll probably be fining you for it.
Update, Feb. 26 at 4:43 p.m. ET: Earnhardt’s team didn’t repair the car to meet minimum speed in the five minutes NASCAR allows teams to repair cars in under its new rules. NASCAR’s favorite driver for about a million years running is done for the day.
Update, Feb. 27 at 10:45 a.m. ET: Fox Sports reports that Goodyear spokespeople later said Busch’s tires were intact. Plot twist!