Corey LaJoie was not penalized by NASCAR following a late-race dust-up with Kyle Busch in last weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series The Great American Getaway 400 at Pocono Raceway. While the onboard video from LaJoie’s car suggests that he turned right into the left rear quarterpanel of Busch’s car, after Busch made a block moments before on LaJoie heading into Turn 1, LaJoie insists that he did not intend to send Busch crashing into the dangerous turn.
Well, at least that was the final story from LaJoie. Busch stopped by the Pat McAfee show on Friday and spoke about the incident. Busch says that he has not talked to LaJoie, who reached out to him after the incident simply because he feels LaJoie is lying about whether he had intent to crash him at Pocono.
Busch cited LaJoie’s story changing between his interviews post-race at Pocono, on social media, early in the week, and then on his Stacking Pennies podcast. Busch says payback is coming for LaJoie.
Kyle Busch did not hold back on his thoughts about the crash with Corey LaJoie at Pocono Raceway. Busch says after LaJoie texted him, he didn’t reach back out because LaJoie kept changing his story, calls LaJoie a liar. pic.twitter.com/uIcBtpagFy
— Toby Christie (@Toby_Christie) July 19, 2024
“No, he texted me, and then called me. 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. Payback is coming,” Busch stated emphatically.
Busch also broke down the crash footage with the Pat McAfee Show, and he explained that the field was already five-wide before LaJoie attempted to cut below him heading into Turn 1. Busch says when LaJoie noticed he was running out of racing room, he decided to hook Busch out of the way instead of fading back.
“I’m the fifth car, I’m five-wide, and then you’ll see here on the bottom right of the screen, the yellow line will start coming up, and so Corey is like, ‘Well, I gotta get back up on the race track,’ and so instead of just blending in behind me, and making sure that he doesn’t crash the whole field, he just clips me. And that’s like stupid. What are we doing? We’re going 190 miles per hour into that corner and we’re going to wreck each other,” Busch stated.
The fiery driver also noted that this isn’t the first time LaJoie has flat-out wiped a driver out this season.
“And that’s the second time he’s done that this year. He did it to ole seven-time Jimmie Johnson at Kansas,” Busch recalled.
When pressed on needing to have faith in the drivers around him, while driving 200 miles-per-hour on the racetrack, Busch cut off McAfee and stated, “I don’t have faith in any of them.”
Busch expanded on his thoughts by talking about the recent struggles that have resulted in five DNFs over his last seven starts.
“I mean, I’ve been wrecked in five out of the last seven races by somebody,” Busch explained. “So, I don’t have faith in — Maybe I’m just slow and I’m in the way, and they know I’m slow so I’m an easy one to pass and so they just want to knock me out.”
While it has been a rough stretch for Busch, who now sits 19th on the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Grid, 102 points below the Playoff Cutline, the driver could very much still be in the thick of pointing his way into the Playoffs without the recent rash of on-track incidents.
Busch says that while his cars have been to his liking yet this season, his Richard Childress Racing team is starting to try some things that they have found lately.
“Our cars have not been that great right now. We’re working on them.” Busch conceded. “We’ve come to a lot of things that we’re kind of learning about and figuring out. Last year, we were good. When I joined RCR, we won three of the first 12-15 races or something like that. It was pretty good. It’s been a bit of a dry spell ever since.”
It’ll be a day filled with LaJoie looking over his shoulder in Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Like Pocono, Indianapolis is a really fast race track, with some really bad angles in turns if you get crashed by fellow drivers. If Busch is really as mad at LaJoie as he conveyed on the McAfee show, expect payback to come quickly, and harshly for LaJoie.
