NASCAR Plans to Discuss Incident with Corey LaJoie but No Penalty for Contact with Kyle Busch at Pocono Raceway
NASCAR has announced plans to talk with Corey LaJoie following his contact with Kyle Busch during last weekend’s Cup race at Pocono Raceway, but there will be no penalty imposed. Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, described the incident as a racing incident.
“We’re in-race,” Sawyer explained when asked by NBC Sports if LaJoie would face penalties. “We’re in competition. We got two guys racing hard. You listen to the in-car audio on (LaJoie’s radio), you don’t hear anything from the driver. There’s some comments made by the crew chief and spotter, neither one of them is driving the car. … So didn’t hear anything from (the driver). Plan to have a conversation with Corey just to make sure he’s in a good place there. But yeah, that one, we let the guys race.”
On the Lap 121 restart at Pocono, LaJoie moved low on the frontstretch and Busch shifted down to block. LaJoie hit Busch in the left rear, causing Busch’s car to spin and triggering a crash that involved five other cars, ending the race for three of them.
“I can tell you it wasn’t intentional,” LaJoie said on his “Stacking Pennies” podcast regarding the contact with Busch. LaJoie mentioned that he had texted Busch but had not received a response by the time he recorded his podcast on Monday.
“I do feel a conversation is warranted there,” LaJoie added. “I do feel worse about it on Monday than I did on Sunday night because now I see everything, it makes more sense to me. People that are on Reddit are probably having their own opinions on what happened, but that’s just how aggressive you have to be on restarts, you have to take momentum when you get it. I’ll take some blame there.”
LaJoie explained that Busch was in between gears when he hit the rev limiter chip, which slowed Busch’s momentum. LaJoie noted, “When he throws the initial block, I still had some forward momentum in relation to him. But then it evened out. I was planning on trying to kind of blend back behind him, but at the same time I was committed to kind of fill and get behind him is when he was in the chip. So the amount he was in the chip, I didn’t anticipate his car losing that momentum relative to mine. I spun him out, took out several good cars behind me, which I do feel bad about on Monday.”
After the race, Busch, speaking to NBC Sports’ Kim Coon, declined the need for a conversation with LaJoie, responding “nah” when asked about it.
LaJoie finished 19th in the race, while Busch ended up 32nd, marking the fifth time in the last seven races that Busch has failed to finish. His winless streak now stands at a career-long 42 races as he heads into Sunday’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
