“Double standards.” That’s the term fans had branded onto NASCAR after the DVP debacle back in October. When the Big One at Tallageda happened, Chase Elliott and Chase Briscoe went back into the pits as fans expected them to return for a fight for a playoff spot. As for Blaney and other drivers, they just had to sit the race out. Well, it’s happened again, and Kyle Busch wasn’t having any of it.

“I don’t even think they know their own rules or procedures,” he fumed, having been disqualified at Daytona due to the Damaged Vehicle Policy regulations. Busch had gotten repairs, tried to make his 3 attempts at the minimum speed, and then came back into the pits for repairs when he was disqualified.

And Busch didn’t stay quiet about it. He backed his claim up with a simple statement. “Parked by NASCAR officials. The rule says you have 3 attempts to make minimum speed. The race never went back green.” Now, we know how NASCAR is when it comes to considering changes to these rules, but little did fans know they had a surprise waiting for them.

His criticism struck a nerve. Just weeks later, in a rare acknowledgment that perhaps Kyle Busch had a point, NASCAR announced a significant change to the Damaged Vehicle Policy just weeks after the incident. Veteran journalist Toby Christie broke the news: “NASCAR has issued an update to the Damaged Vehicle Policy. Previously, if a car was on pit road getting repairs and the time limit expired, the car would go to the garage to finish repairs. Now, repairs can continue on pit road, but will result in a stop-and-go penalty.”

The bigger change is to the wording of the statement itself. Essentially, the problem for Kyle Busch and his team was the interpretation of the rule, according to NASCAR Senior Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer. “The one thing that we added this year is, at the scene of the incident, if you can’t drive away, we would hook the vehicle and we would tow it to the garage. Once you go to the garage, you’re going to get one opportunity to leave the garage and go on the racetrack. And this is not a new rule either — you get one opportunity at three consecutive green laps to meet minimum speed. Once you do that, you reset and you’re kind of back in the game. In Kyle’s case, he went out, left the garage, came back in and once you do that, then you’re going to be eliminated from the event.” 

This aspect was backed up by Tommy Baldwin on the Door Bumper Clear podcast, who explained what the rules meant. “He went out under caution and then came back in cause it was still problems, but still you went back out. So, he needed to stay out, stay out, make minimum, and then come back and work on it. If it made minimum speed, then he could have went on pit road, and no more, no more clock, no more anything, and work on the car.”

For Busch, the problem ultimately boiled down to this. His car, even after repairs, wasn’t good enough to make the minimum speed forcing him to come back. For now, NASCAR taking Busch’s opinion into consideration still is a step forward. As for Kyle Busch, there is some success for him in the Truck Series.

Kyle Busch finds redemption in old stomping ground

While Rowdy has been making headlines in the last few months about his lack of Cup Series wins in the past year, fans often forget he’s the winningest Truck Series driver in NASCAR history. With over 60 wins to his name, Busch keeps going back to Trucks whenever he can, and that was his plan for the Atlanta weekend as well. Driving the #7 Spire Motorsports truck, Rowdy managed a win as he found a different side of fans waiting for him.

You see, throughout his career, Kyle Busch was used to rowdy fans yelling at him from the stands, and his lack of wins meant he hadn’t felt that crowd’s road in the victory lane for a long time. After Atlanta, everything changed. Busch said, “I like noise. Noise is good. Somebody else once said noise is a great thing… It’s cool, when I got out of that truck, I was like, What?… I just won a truck race…It felt good. You know, I’ve been limited on my starts, of being able to go to Victory lane and the Cup stuff hasn’t quite worked out as well as we wanted…we missed a few opportunities,…we could have, should have won last year.”

Perhaps Rowdy can break the streak this year. A return to glory could be on the table for one of the most iconic NASCAR drivers of all time.