“Wish I Had Wrecked Him Harder” – Dale Earnhardt Jr Once ‘Ran Over’ Kyle Busch At The Peak of Their Ugly Rivalry

Having one of the most memorable rivalries in NASCAR and almost always at each other’s throats, Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr feuded for a pretty long time. Unsurprisingly, Rowdy has had many rivals over his career, including Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski, but it was his equation with Jr that really brought out the best (or worst).

One such incident at the peak of the feud occurred in Richmond in 2008, an incident that did not end there. 

Dale Jr once revealed, “He [Kyle Busch] was having this great season, and I was right on his heels… He wrecked me at Richmond… He slid into me and spun me out. I hit the wall. The fans they went crazy. That’s what really sent Kyle into villain town…“

“So we go back to Richmond next time and I ran over him, wrecked him.”

“Yeah, oh yeah [when asked if he did it on purpose]. I had to like… 85 percent of them wanted me to do it… I wish I had wrecked him harder than I did. I hit him and I thought I hit him hard enough. And he goes up there and back in the wall. It hurt his day which was my intent but I wanted to wreck him hard… We continue to bash each other and dog each other in the media and just dirty look at each other every time,” he said.

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What Junior narrated was a perfect embodiment of what their time racing against each other looked like. Neither was ready to give an inch of space. That’s how competitive it was. But as he revealed later, things have improved over time and they have evolved and matured.

Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr sorted things out on a podcast

With the amount of bad blood that existed after the incidents at Richmond and other such spats, the two chose to hash it out over a podcast after Dale Jr’s retirement.

On the Dale Jr Download podcast, Busch said “So here’s what happened. I come off a tube and I didn’t really get that good of an exit. Junior had a bit of a better exit so he got a little bit of momentum. I saw everybody up front and they were all dodging left and I’m like they all are gonna wreck. So I wanted to get off to the right to get a better vantage point but they never wrecked. By the time I was coming back down, it was corner entry and Junior was there.”

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Both drivers, now friends, laughed the incident off on the podcast. It showed that there no longer remained any grudges or animosity for their time racing against each other. It is nice to see rivalries turn into such warm friendships.