On the latest episode of The Teardown, The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi discussed the last-lap dust-up between Ross Chastain and Kyle Busch at Sonoma Raceway.
Chastain seemingly spun Busch out on the final lap of the Toyota/Save Mart 350, which prompted some discussion of whether or not the No. 1 purposefully moved the two-time Cup Series champion. Busch certainly believed so, and it’s evident Gluck shares a similar sentiment to the No. 8 wheelman.
“One person Kyle Larson had to pass on his way up through the field was Kyle Busch. I think it was third place at the time. Larson said afterwards, as he was coming up to Kyle Busch, given their incident last week, he was like, ‘Alright, well, I guess we’re about to find out whether we’re good or not.’ … He just basically let him go, raced him clean. Knew he was on fresher tires. Played it smart. It looked like he was going to be en route for a top five finish, until it appeared that he got Chastain’d at the end of the race,” Gluck stated. “Now, it sounded like Chastain said, I didn’t hear his TV interview, but I guess he’d indicated that he felt like Busch might’ve run out of fuel at that point or something, that something might’ve happened to that car to lead up to that, and that’s why Ross got into him. Maybe, I’m not sure.
“But the in-car … I felt like Chastain just kind of slides up into him. Kind of missed the corner, and just took Kyle Busch out. It seemed to me that it was Chastain’s fault. … I would assume Kyle Busch is not happy about that. I would assume that’ll probably carry over. He may retaliate at some point, with Ross. He probably won’t appreciate that.”
Bianchi shared a similar opinion to Gluck and Busch, providing some interesting examples of Chastain’s trademark aggressiveness, which we haven’t seen in some time, returning throughout the afternoon in California.
“I mean, we kind of saw this from Ross throughout the day,” Bianchi added. “There was a moment where he was racing Daniel Suarez, his teammate, at the end of the stage and he got aggressive a little bit, and Suarez came over his radio and was like, ‘What was going on there?’ There was another moment or two on the racetrack, where the No. 1 was aggressive today.
“Chastain was on it today. He wasn’t like, Ross circa 2023, and the early part of the year. He was certainly an aggressor today. The incident with Kyle Busch just seemed like, it didn’t seem like Busch had a problem there. Let me put it this way, there was nothing said over the radio after Busch spun that indicated that he had a fuel issue, or anything like that. It was a flat, the spotter came on and said, ‘We flat got dumped,’ and that’s what it looked like.”
Kyle Busch’s season of ‘misery’ continues due to Ross Chastain incident
Continuing, Bianchi provided some more context into Busch’s side of the story, adding some details regarding how the wreck changed Sunday afternoon from a fruitful one to another in a long line of miserable performances for the Richard Childress Racing driver.
“For Kyle Busch, this is just a continuation of what has been a very frustrating, and way be-gone season, of just misery,” Bianchi elaborated. “You have speed in your race car again, for the second week in a row, and this time you again leave with a finish. Now, this wasn’t necessarily your mistake, like a week ago, but still, you’re looking at the standings, and he’s eight points out of a playoff spot. So, he was going to finish top five, that’s the difference between being in a playoff spot, and not being in a playoff spot. Those points are going to be so valuable, and it just seems like this team, whether it’s last week at Gateway or this week, earlier in the year, when they’re having issues on pit road, they have just thrown away a lot of points this year, and it’s not good.
“It more often than not ends up biting you in the butt, when you’re on the playoff bubble, and these are going to be a very long ten weeks for this team. Very nervous ten weeks. Because the reality is too, they don’t appear like they’re close to winning. I know Austin Cindric came out of nowhere and won last week, and that can certainly happen with Kyle. We know that, he’s got the talent. RCR’s got the ability to do that. But consistency matters, and they just don’t have consistent speed to think that they’re going to go out there and win a race somewhere.”
Time will tell if Kyle Busch responds to Ross Chastain’s contact from Sonoma, but a win needs to be at the forefront of the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion’s mind, as he looks to ensure he doesn’t miss the playoffs in 2024.
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