During the closing stages of Sunday’s DAYTONA 500 at Daytona International Speedway, just about everybody who was still on the racetrack had their minds laser-focused at the task at hand; figuring out how to put themselves in the best position to win “The Great American Race”.
After what would end up being the final caution of the event – with four laps to go – the intensity of the race picked up in a way that happens consistently at the end of these superspeedway events. With sketchy moves being made throughout the pack, it appeared as though a multi-car wreck was looming.
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But it’s the DAYTONA 500! You never know what’s going to happen at the end of these races. Just last February, William Byron took the white flag outside the top-10, and when the field wrecked, the No. 24 drove through the smoke and took the victory.
For just about everybody in the lead draft, that was the mentality… not Kyle Busch, though.
Busch, a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and the polesitter for this year’s DAYTONA 500, was sitting just outside the top-20 as the lead draft approached two laps to go, when out of nowhere, the No. 8 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 slowed on the racetrack.
Any casual onlooker might believe that the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) driver was nursing some kind of mechanical issue at the conclusion of the 500-mile contest, but instead, the slowing of pace was self-inflicted.
As can be seen by watching his on-board camera, Busch chose to slow down and get away from the lead draft in the closing laps of the race. Asked over the radio if he was out of gas, the Las Vegas, Nevada-native, clearly frustrated, had something to say in return.
“What the fuck am I going to rush into the wreck for?” Busch said over the radio. “We’re running fucking 30th.”
#NASCAR… Coming to two laps to go, Kyle Busch, running just outside the top-20, lets off the gas and drops out of the lead draft.
“What the fuck am I going to rush into the wreck for,” Busch says. “We’re running fucking 30th.”
Busch finished 15th.
— Joseph Srigley (@joe_srigley) February 16, 2026
The field did end up wrecking (on multiple occasions) on the final lap of the DAYTONA 500, which turned a potentially dismal 30th-place finish into a top-15 for Busch, with the Zone Nicotine Pouches Chevrolet crossing the line in 15th.
So, why on earth would Kyle Busch, a driver who has spent the last 20-plus years of his life trying to secure a victory in the prestigious DAYTONA 500, bail on that possibility so close to the end of a race?
Could it be a direct result of NASCAR’s brand-new (but also at the same time, kind of old) championship format? The Chase returns to NASCAR’s National Series in 2026, and while Busch could have risked his racecar for a potential top-15 finish in that scenario, there was a high probability that the No. 8, in the hornet’s nest, was going to be involved in a wreck — just based on who was around him and their involvement in the last-lap wrecks.
So, instead, Busch drops to the back of the field with a perfectly clean racecar and waits for the wreck to happen. Sure, the plan may have worked better had the wreck happened before the white flag — sending the race into NASCAR Overtime — but this way, the 40-year-old driver still managed to get inside the top-15, a result that would have been a stretch otherwise.
Now, the last couple of seasons, they’ve been difficult for Kyle Busch, once a perennial championship contender in the NASCAR Cup Series. His second and third seasons at Richard Childress Racing have seen the all-time wins leader across two of NASCAR’s three National Series miss out on a 16-driver post-season.
Now, if things don’t end up improving for Busch and RCR this season and the team finds itself around the cutline at the end of the regular season, remember this decision.
Whether it was an intentional “points racing” play or not, it could end up being the difference between Busch making ‘The Chase’ or missing NASCAR’s post-season for a third soul-crushing year.
