What if we told you Ricky Stenhouse Jr was not the only victim of Kyle Busch‘s shenanigans last weekend? Rowdy’s aggressive racing style has time and again resulted in heated head-to-head conversations or speaking in NASCAR lingo, head-to-bumper with several drivers in the past. With $1m on the line, Rowdy’s flying temper resulted in an arrogant maneuver that destroyed the hopes of Stenhouse Jr. But this was not the only “spin” orchestrated by the #8!

After Kyle Busch sent Ricky Stenhouse Jr‘s car crashing out, in the shadows was Ty Gibbs, the grandson of Joe Gibbs, waiting for his turn and playing a patience game to escape the same fate as the #47.

No one should come between Kyle Busch and Victory Lane

In a move that most people deemed unnecessary, Busch made contact with Ricky Stenhouse Jr, sending him into the wall and out of the race with 198 laps still remaining. Then, to add insult to injury, Busch made contact with Gibbs’ #54, spinning him out in Turn 1, bringing out a caution.

And in that moment, Gibbs’ spotter, Tony Hirschman, could be heard warning his driver to stay away from Busch. “You saw what happened with him and #47. So just wait,” the spotter said. An indication of how unpredictable Busch’s driving was.

Though Kyle Busch promptly apologized, saying, “My bad, #54”, both commentators and the JGR team seemed done with Rowdy’s driving style. While the broadcaster lamented, “Oh, no! Again?” indicating this was not the first time the RCR driver spoiled somebody else’s run that day, Hirschman said, “He owned it. He knows he screwed up again. So, that’s on him.”

But tempers reached a boiling point post-race when Stenhouse Jr and Busch got into a scuffle with each other. This culminated in Stenhouse ultimately punching Busch. The event was made more significant with a lot of NASCAR people justifying the fact that Stenhouse Jr’s actions were a long time coming against Kyle Busch, who, according to him, was bullying people.

The confrontation between Busch and Stenhouse Jr transcends their feud. Busch has always been a driver whose combative nature has brought him a lot of hatred and much love. Following their latest chapter, already calls are coming in to get more penalties to try to curb this type of on-the-track behavior. Just hours later, NASCAR officials were expected to discuss what happened and announce some type of penalty in the wake of those actions that could also see Busch bear the brunt for his antics! Well, not quite.

Heavy penalties are laid on Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and the team on account of violating the NASCAR Member Code of Conduct. And Kyle Busch was handed a clean chit. Following are the penalties levied on the JTG Daugherty Racing:

• A $75,000 penalty on Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
• Two team members, mechanic Clint Myrick and tuner Keith Matthews, are suspended for the next four Cup Series races. The former was initially supposed to serve for the next eight Cup Series races.
• Ricky Stenhouse Sr has been suspended indefinitely.

In NASCAR’s defense, Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s Senior Vice President of Competition, came on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio to highlight what really ticked off the governing body to reason why it is Ricky Jr’s cross to bear, “When you wait 198 laps and you make those decisions that were made, we’re going to react to that…

“Granted there was no tunnel, granted there was no crossover bridge, but better decisions could have been made throughout that period of time between the incident that happened on the racetrack and the incident that happened in the garage post-race.”

Is there something more to Kyle Busch’s hard racing?

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Kyle Busch’s aggression can be partly attributed to his dearth of good results this season. While his Truck Series career has shined through, when it comes to stock car racing’s top tourney, things have taken a severe tumble. Except for a three-wide photo finish at Atlanta that saw him finish P3, and a P4 finish at Dover, there’s not much for the racer to look back on. Evidently, even Kyle Busch has been affected by his own performance, often voicing his frustration toward the Next-Gen car.

“The old car didn’t have that sensation, it was easy to just make a smooth corner and have the balance stay the same the whole time, where now, I feel like I’m fighting many more balance issues… throw in the aero deficiencies that you have in traffic and now you’re just confused. You think that you’re going to expect it to do one thing and it does something else and you lose a tenth of a second,” the #8 driver had said in a pre-race media presser at Darlington.

Furthermore, he even took to social media to announce his hatred for the current racing cars, “Ride in line=finish where u r. TRY to race win=finish last. I hate these [swearing emoticon] cars!!!”

It’s safe to say that the #8 driver is doing everything in his power to turn his fortunes around, even at the expense of other racers. In sum, the All-Star crash at North Wilkesboro has brought another episode to Kyle Busch’s controversial career.