NASCAR plans to talk with Corey LaJoie but will not penalize him for his contact with Kyle Busch during last weekend’s Cup race at Pocono Raceway.
Elton Sawyer, NASCAR senior vice president of competition, said Tuesday that series officials viewed the contact as a racing incident.
“We’re in-race,” Sawyer said when asked by NBC Sports if LaJoie would be penalized. “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 went low on the frontstretch and Busch moved down to block. LaJoie hit Busch in the left rear, turning Busch’s car and triggering a crash that collected five other cars, ending the race for three of those drivers.
“I can tell you it wasn’t intentional,” LaJoie said on his “Stacking Pennies” podcast of the contact with Busch.
LaJoie said on the podcast he had texted Busch but had not received a response at the time he was taping his podcast on Monday.
“I do feel a conversation is warranted there,” LaJoie said on his podcast. “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.
“I think that if Kyle pulls fifth gear and the momentum of his car doesn’t change as much then I won’t turn him around. I think we just roll around the corner.”
LaJoie said on his podcast that felt that Busch was in between gears when he hit the rev limiter chip and that slowed Busch’s momentum.
“When he throws the initial block, I still had some forward momentum in relation to him,” LaJoie said on his podcast. “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.”
Asked about the incident after exiting the infield care center at Pocono, Busch thanked his supporters and team. Asked by NBC Sports’ Kim Coon if he needed to have a conversation with LaJoie, Busch said “nah.”
After playing that clip on the podcast, LaJoie said: “So that makes me a little nervous that I might have to pull my belts a little bit tight. That’s what that means. … You know he’s thinking something vastly different than what he’s saying. With how (Busch’s) team has had this year, I have just now, just (Sunday) helped with how bad their year’s going, unfortunately.”
LaJoie went on to finish 19th. Busch finished 32nd — the fifth time in the last seven races Busch has failed to finish a race. Busch’s winless streak is a career-long 42 races heading into Sunday’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET on NBC).