Saturday, Kyle Busch looked like a man who had rediscovered the cheat code. He strolled into Victory Lane after winning his second consecutive Truck race at Atlanta like a gunslinger who’d just cleaned out the saloon and was wondering if anyone else fancied a go.
But Sunday afternoon at the same track he was instead staring at a crumpled No. 8 Chevrolet and contemplating the sort of weekend emotional whiplash usually reserved for soap operas.
The Autotrader 400 began innocently enough. Busch rolled off 14th in the 38-car field, hovering around 13th as the race settled into that familiar Atlanta rhythm—half chess match, half bar fight at 190 mph. He wasn’t spectacular, but he wasn’t floundering either. For a driver trying to turn around a sluggish start to his Cup season and hoping to end a long winless streak, “steady” would have done nicely.
There was, however, a small hiccup. Busch was slated to take fuel and two tires on a stop. Instead, thanks to a pit-road miscue, he received four fresh Goodyears and a one-way ticket to 24th on the restart. In NASCAR, that’s the equivalent of choosing the salad and being served the entire cow. Suddenly the afternoon required more elbow than elegance.
Then came lap 125.
Exiting Turn 2, Busch didn’t get the cleanest run. The car was a bit crooked, a bit loose, a bit vulnerable. Sensing daylight, he moved up to fill a hole ahead of Noah Gragson in the No. 4 Ford. What happened next unfolded with the inevitability of gravity. The Ford met the Chevy. The Chevy went sideways. And Busch’s car speared nose-first into the inside retaining wall on the backstretch with all the subtlety of a lawn dart.
Race over.
Busch climbed out under his own power and was evaluated and released from the infield care center, physically fine but undoubtedly simmering. Because while sheet metal can be replaced, patience is harder to source.
“I just didn’t have the best of exits off of Turn Two and I was a little crooked getting to the wall,” Busch said. “I just got rammed by the No. 4 (Noah Gragson); no check-up or anything. He didn’t give me an opportunity to make sure I was straight before hitting me or get into me gently to just try and get the momentum back going again. He just drove right through me.
“That’s kids these days.”
So it wasn’t just a crash, but a generational commentary delivered at 200 beats per minute.
Busch entered the day 14th in the Cup standings after a workmanlike 15th in the Daytona 500. This was supposed to be the race where the tide began to turn. Instead, it became another entry in a growing catalog of what-might-have-beens. A split weekend: dominant on Saturday, demolished on Sunday.
In NASCAR, momentum is everything. One minute you’re hoisting a trophy. The next, you’re holding an ice pack and explaining how “kids these days” don’t lift. For Busch, the search for a Cup rebound rolls on—preferably with fewer walls, fewer pit-road surprises, and perhaps a little more courtesy at corner exit.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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