TALLADEGA, Ala. – Kurt Busch may have been short on fuel at the end of Sunday’s 1000Bulbs.com 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, but he was anything but short on words after climbing from his No. 41 Ford.
Busch was outspoken towards the NASCAR officiating department for their handling of the final lap of the overtime-extended fifth race of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, in which a long caution and subsequent crash on the white flag lap put Busch in a position to fall out of the lead.
The Las Vegas native felt that an extra lap of caution was taken prior to the final restart, aiding in running his fuel tank dry, and that NASCAR should have called for a caution and frozen the field after two exceptionally-hard hits by both Chase Elliott and Matt DiBenedetto in the final-lap melee Sunday.
“There was two missed calls by NASCAR at the end,” Busch said on NBC after the race. “Why we had an extra yellow flag lap is beyond me. The track was ready to go.
“At the end, once we crossed the white flag … if there’s a wreck and an ambulance needs to be dispatched, the caution should be called,” he continued. “I’ve been on the other side of that, where I was coming back and racing to win the race and they said ‘Well, we had to dispatch an ambulance.’ There were two cars dead in the water down there.”
Both Elliott and DiBenedetto came down the banking and into the grass after crashing on the last lap.
“Chase Elliott’s safety is of my concern,” Busch said. “So was the 32 car. It’s a human call. There’s rules that need to be stricter at the end of these races.”
Busch, whose last pit stop came just prior to a restart with 47 to go in regulation, said there wasn’t much more he could have done to keep any additional gas in the tank.
“I was trying to use all the information I had at my disposal (to save fuel),” noted Busch. “My guys were telling me where my other teammates were lifting and what their fuel mileage was … but you don’t want to conserve too much and bring our cars back to where the rest of the field was.
“I was doing everything I could to manage the situation.”
Still, Busch gained nine points on the cut line for elimination from where he started the day. He leaves Talladega 30 markers ahead of ninth-place Brad Keselowski, sitting in a somewhat-comfortable position heading into next Sunday’s elimination race at Kansas Speedway.
“What a Monster Ford we had. We led a lot of laps,” Busch noted. “I tried to stay positive. I knew there would be restarts at the end and that we needed to save fuel.
“I did everything in my power and on my checklist to come home first; it just didn’t work out that way. Our points position, though … that’s good stuff. We had 21 (points) coming into this, and if you can bank nine and get the heck out of Talladega, that sounds good to me.”
