Kyle Busch rips 'whining' NASCAR fans after nail-biting finish
Kyle Busch is a love-him-or-hate-him figure in NASCAR circles, as polarizing a person as you’ll find outside of politics.
He is not afraid to use every trick in the rule book to push his car past an opponent’s with methods that would make a commuter in Boston blush.
At the Overton’s 400 Sunday at the Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Illinois, Busch brilliantly walked the line between auto race and “Blues Brothers” chase scene to take the checkered flag.
Kyle Larson, who had been a country mile behind with 20 laps to go, made up the deficit with a furious charge.
With the white flag looming, Larson decided not to surrender but to squeeze his car into the gap low, making contact with Busch in the process and sending Busch up into the wall.
Most of the time, such a fate would spell curtains not just for first place but for the race itself, as 399 miles of racing gave way to a DNF and a wrecked car.
But Busch, in a masterful stroke of downright Mario Kart-level chicanery, bent the laws of physics like a steel girder in the hands of Superman, bounced off the wall, rear-ended Larson’s car to get it to swerve off balance and onto the track apron, bounced off the wall a second time, and as Larson was forced to slow down to regain control, Busch zipped past him and won the race by 1.8 seconds.
The finish of the year. @KyleBusch wins at @ChicagolndSpdwy after he and Kyle Larson swap the lead on the final lap! #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/Tm6tamaWd3
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) July 1, 2018
It was one of the most thrilling finishes not just of the season but in modern NASCAR history, an absolutely spectacular, this-is-why-we-watch Hollywood ending.
And many fans, who thought Busch engaged in dirty tactics, booed.
Busch’s reaction to those jeers?
He made a mock crying-face gesture and said flatly, “If you don’t like that kind of racing, then don’t watch.”
What a rebound, and what a finish. @KyleBusch addressed the fans booing him, and talked about the last lap battle between him and @KyleLarsonRacin. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/S21yXSRuqH
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) July 1, 2018
“If it wasn’t for lapped traffic, it wouldn’t even have been a race, so I don’t know what you all are whining about,” Busch said.
Larson, meanwhile, gave Busch a thumbs-up on the cooldown lap; unlike the fans, he seems to understand what sport he’s competing in and recognized that he just straight-up got red-shelled and got the worst of the exchange.
“I roughed him up; he roughed me up,” said Larson. “It was just hard racing.”
NASCAR has been suffering lately from diminishing TV ratings.
A few more finishes like the one at Chicagoland, however, and it might be just about time for a new golden age for the sport.
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