Kyle Busch said the package NASCAR had teams use this weekend at Dover International Speedway was “terrible.”
Busch made his comments after placing 10th Monday.
Winner Martin Truex Jr. and runner-up Alex Bowman each had to come from the rear of the field after multiple inspection failures before the race, but that mattered little to Busch.
“It’s terrible,” Busch said, according to Frontstretch.com reporter Davey Segal. “All I can do is bitch about it and fall on deaf ears and we’ll come back with the same thing in the fall.”
.@KyleBusch scored his 11th straight top 10 finish, but he doesn’t care.
— Davey Segal (@DaveyCenter) May 6, 2019
“The package sucks. No f*cking question about it. It’s terrible. All I can do is bitch about it and fall on deaf ears and we’ll come back with the same thing it in the fall.” 😳
Car owner Bob Leavine tweeted: “Let me second @KyleBusch statement, this package sucks. Has nothing to do with where he finished.”
Christopher NASCAR officials do not think it appropriate that a team owner speak out criticizing their package on social media so I’m not making any more comments about it. They may be right. https://t.co/QYK8sr49Zk
— Bob Leavine (@BLeavine) May 6, 2019
NASCAR used the package with 750 horsepower and more downforce this weekend at Dover, and it led to faster speeds.
Kevin Harvick stated during the weekend that speeds in the center of the corner were 17 mph faster than last year.
Busch stated Friday that the speeds were “probably too fast. The faster we tend to go in the middle of the corners doesn’t always produce the best racing.”
Not all drivers agreed with him about speeds being too fast. Chase Elliott said Friday: “You’re paid to go fast so let’s go fast, I guess.”
But some drivers acknowledged that the higher speeds could make passing more difficult in the race.
“It was definitely really hard to pass,” Truex said after his second victory of the season. “There’s no question about that. I got stuck behind lapped cars multiple times. If you were running the bottom and they were running a lane up, you were good. If they decided just to cut to the bottom in front of you and shut your air off, you about drive into the fence off the corner. It’s tough.
“But at the end of the day we had to deal with the same thing. Obviously we dealt with it better than everybody else, which coming into the weekend that was our goal. We know it is going to be tough. Starting in the back is going to suck but that’s what we’ve got to deal with it, so how do we deal with it the best that we can? That was how we set up for the race.”
Truex said his opinion on the package means little.
“At the end of the day it’s all about the fans and what do they think?” Truex said. “Was the race good? I don’t know. I thought it looked pretty good. What do the fans think? What does NASCAR think? What do the owners think? They’re the three people that make all the decisions. We just drive them. We’ll see where it goes from here.”
.@KevinHarvick post-race (P4) 👇🏼
— Davey Segal (@DaveyCenter) May 6, 2019
"Here's the hard thing about the package. I think that NASCAR's tried to accomplish a lot of things with one particular package, but you look at how the cars drive behind each other & from a driver's standpoint, it's hard to race them. Anywhere."
Thank you Corky @corkybailey for the encouragement, it really gets trying at times. https://t.co/g1ELl7VowI
— Bob Leavine (@BLeavine) May 6, 2019
Thank you for the invite but we better hold off on that, the #95 still has to go thru a lot of inspections before year end. https://t.co/9wXcLZYLlp
— Bob Leavine (@BLeavine) May 6, 2019