Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch has explained his crash in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas that took him out of victory contention.
Busch – who leads the Cup standings after two wins and five podiums in seven races – had won the Truck series and Xfinity series races on Friday and Saturday at the same venue.
The JGR driver was running in fifth after he ran wide and lost places, having led 66 laps, and in his attempt to regain ground he hit the Turn 2 wall with 49 laps remaining.
Busch’s team-mate Denny Hamlin took his second win of the year, while Busch eventually recovered to 10th.
“We actually made an adjustment to tighten up the car in order to have it be a little bit more under control for the end of the race there and it just busted loose on me,” Busch said.
“I was just trying to hustle and keep the lap time going and keep the distance to those guys behind me, and it just didn’t work out.
“It just snapped on me.
“Luckily, we caught it and was able to get back rolling again, and then just fighting it there behind those guys in dirty air and I got in the wall off of [Turn] 2.
“I hate it for all of my guys and everybody that works so hard.
“They [the team] deserve to win, they should’ve won and threw it away.”
Despite multiple instances of contact with the wall Busch has retained his lead at the top of the standings.
He said the new NASCAR aero package introduced for this year makes the cars react slightly differently than in previous seasons and that his car lacked downforce at times during the race.
“It’s pretty different [with the new aero],” he added.
“As you’re hustling through the corners, and you’re trying to run as close to wide open as you can, sometimes your car needs that downforce and it needs that air to be on top of it in order to make sure you have that grip.
“We just didn’t have it there a couple of times.”