Kyle Busch accepted the move Kevin Harvick made to win Sunday’s Foxwoods Resort 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway but was clear in his view of the circumstances.
Harvick made contact with Busch seven laps from the finish Sunday to take the lead and drive away to win the 20th race of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season. While Busch was all right with the contact, he will not be afraid to return the favor should the opportunity present itself down the road.
“Well, he did that because of Chicago,” Busch said referring to his battle with Kyle Larson earlier this month in the closing laps of the Overton’s 400 at Chicagoland Speedway when both drivers got physical with one another. “I think that, you know, he had a fair game. Everybody has fair game on Kyle Busch – that’s for sure when it comes to the fan base, so, you know, that’s fine.
“That’s how – that’s how they want to race, that’s how I’ll race back, but, you know, it was just a bump. I mean, it wasn’t a big deal. He didn’t wreck me or anything like that, so he did it early enough, but he did it way harder and pushed me out of the groove three lanes and it just takes you so long to recover here that it was just no possible way I could get back to him, so – and I was slower anyways. I was in the way, so no harm, no foul.”
While Busch accepted his fate on Sunday, he was still disappointed. Harvick put win number six on the board and Busch is stuck on five victories. He thought Harvick might have been able to get by him without having to get physical.
“Those SHR (Stewart-Haas Racing) cars, they were all fast today and we just didn’t have what we needed there, so I was just kind of backing up and, you know, (Kevin) Harvick was using me up there for about four or five corners in a row, which is fine,” he said.
“You know, I think he could have made the move work cleaner than that, but, you know, it’s all fair game when you’re racing. How you race is how you get raced.”
