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Kyle Busch Parked In Texas

After “crossing the line” in the WinStar World Casino 350k Friday night at Texas Motor Speedway, Kyle Busch has been barred from competing in the rest of the NASCAR events this weekend. Michael McDowell will take over driving the #18 M&M’s Toyota in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race on Sunday and Denny Hamlin will race the #18 Toyota in the NASCAR Nationwide Series race today.

An altercation during lap fourteen of the Camping World Truck Series race ended with Busch driving championship contender Ron Hornaday’s Chevrolet into the wall, knocking him out of the race. Hornaday and Busch raced past Johnny Chapman, going three wide with Hornaday in the middle. Hornaday pushed up and made contact with Busch, sending them both towards the turn two wall. Both trucks made contact with the wall bringing out the caution. Busch caught up to Hornaday as the trucks entered turn three and latched onto the rear bumper. Busch continued to push Hornaday until the Chevrolet turned nose first into the turn four wall destroying the truck and leaving Hornaday with a 34 th place finish.

“Kyle knew there was a lapper there too. I moved up on the straightaway and he stayed on the quarterpannel. We just touched a little bit,” said Hornaday. “He knows I’m going for a points [championship], I don’t know why he did it. This is just stupid. He knows what I’m going for and he knows I was there.”

“When you consider Ron is in the championship, maybe Ron could have played it a little bit smarter and checked up a bit,” Busch countered. “I’m already on the outside lane, there’s not three lanes out here right now. If I just lay over and give up everything for Ron Hornaday, that’s not Kyle Busch’s fashion. I’m out here to win a race just as much as anyone else is. When he races up on my inside and gets loose and takes me up into the fence, I ended up loosing my cool. I’ve been wrecked four weeks in a row and finally I just had enough of it. I’m sorry it was Ron Hornaday and he’s going for a championship, but you can’t place all blame on just one person, there were two people that got into it and two people that ended it.”

NASCAR president Mike Helton announced the parking of Busch for the remainder of the weekend on Saturday morning.

” During the truck race last night, we had an incident between the 18 [Kyle Busch] and the 33 [Ron Hornaday] trucks that resulted in NASCAR parking the 18 truck for the balance of the event,” explained Helton. “Following the event and after a good deal of conversation and discussion, NASCAR has decided to maintain that parked position on the driver of the 18 truck for the balance of the weekend. So basically what that means is Kyle Busch will not be participating today or tomorrow in the NASCAR event here in Texas.”

Much has been made of the “boys have at it” approach by NASCAR with fans and the media wondering where the line is that would require NASCAR to step in. After a caution filled race at Martinsville affected a number of Chase drivers last weekend, this incident may have been the perfect opportunity to send a message to drivers in all three NASCAR national series.

“The responsibility over the past two or three seasons we’ve given back to the drivers came I think with a very clear understanding that there could be a line that got crossed,” said Helton. “As annoying as the comments that I’ve made personally in the past about ‘we’ll know it when we see it’ might have been, we saw it last night. The implication of the 33 truck being in the points battle in the Camping World Truck Series probably had a small impact on the reaction. But I think the bulk of the action in its entirety, all the circumstances attached to it just accumulated to lead us to the decision we made.”

The door has been left open by NASCAR for further penalties as well.

“We’ll have to wait and see what Monday morning brings. But right now this deals with the balance of this weekend,” said Helton.

The parking of Busch for the Cup race on Sunday ends any thought of a run for the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Currently 57 points behind series leader Carl Edwards, Busch already was a long shot for the Championship.

More importantly for now is what team owner Joe Gibbs and Busch’s sponsors think of this incident.

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