At Texas Motor Speedway, Kyle Busch finally had the day he needed to turn his NASCAR Cup Series season around until it all went off the rails in the closing laps. What happened?
FORT WORTH, Texas — Kyle Busch ran inside the top-10 for most of Sunday's Wurth 400 NASCAR Cup Series race and ranked in the top-10 for several key metrics of the race.
Fifth-most laps inside the top-15, seventh-best average running position and ninth-best driver rating... Yet, Busch finished 20th with the last car on the lead lap.
If you didn't watch the race, you'd probably wonder about what happened.
Did his pit crew have a bad stop? Did his car have a mechanical failure? Was there a wreck that Busch got caught up in? Poor pit strategy?
Any of those outcomes would be far more palatable than what actually happened:
Oh my.
What should've been the perfect race to build momentum ahead of a track that has historically been very good for Busch ended with another mediocre finish and a deeper points hole that arguably could've been avoided completely.
Letting your temper ruin a successful total team effort isn't Rowdy. It's just rude.
With new crew chief Andy Street on the pit box, Busch finally seemed to have a weekend where he and his team were going to turn things around.
There was even an idea that this could be a pivotal race for prospective teams to take a look at him for their program.
On Friday, Busch finished second for Spire Motorsports in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race. After the race, he sounded relatively amiable about the race, Hocevar and his place at Richard Childress Racing (see video above)
On Saturday, Busch delivered a birthday present to himself with his best Cup non-drafting track start since Michigan in June 2025.
The next day, he and Spire Cup drivers Hocevar and Daniel Suarez often led the way for Chevrolet while others, like Spire's Michael McDowell, struggled.
However, the cracks started to show as the race went on. While racing Hocevar, Busch grew frustrated with him.
Spotter Derek Kneeland tried calming Busch. However, Busch fired back, telling Kneeland to "get ice on your crotch" in a frustrated tone.
Then came the final laps and a dive from his best non-drafting track finish all year – to just another 20th-place finish the team will want to forget about.
Busch isn't called Rowdy for nothing and his past at Texas has contributed to that.
In 2010, Busch was penalized multiple laps in the Cup Series race for flipping off a NASCAR official. The next year, he couldn't even compete in the Cup race because of an incident in almost the exact spot as the Nemechek incident where Busch intentionally turned Ron Hornaday Jr., after a dust-up in the previous corner.
Going into each race, Busch had an outside chance at the Cup championship or even finishing a top-five points finish before the incidents washed that away.
In this instance, that incident took the No. 8 team out of a finish that they could've felt really good about, lifting their morale as their Chase hopes seemingly diminish with every passing week.
Luckily, Watkins Glen is next, where Busch started fifth last year. He has also run well at road courses in the NextGen era.
However, it remains to be seen how much that history will matter with where he and his team currently are.
