Kyle Busch confesses new-gen NASCAR racers’ crash than win a race attitude “can’t be fixed”
Two times Cup Series champion Kyle Busch had a serious discussion with Kevin Harvick over the attitude and racing style of NASCAR youngsters.
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Kyle Busch (Via IMAGO)
Over the last few years NASCAR has been witnessing an influx of young talents coming into the sport, winning races in the lower divisions and proving themselves at the elite division. But one issue that has been the major topic of discussion related to the situation was the over aggressive racing style of these drivers.
Veterans of the sports like Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin has been actively criticizing the crash or win attitude of the youngster in the Next-Gen era. Recently the former in an interview with 2014 Cup champion Kevin Harvick shared his thoughts how racing has changed from the respectful Mark Martin era to what it is now.
That was the Mark Martin era, the Jeff Gordon era, the Tony Stewart era – you were there, the Harvick era. That was a different era than what we’re in today.
Kyle Busch said to Kevin Harvick.
The Richard Childress Racing veteran pointed out that the racing style and era changed so much that fixing it is not possible. He pointed out that he can’t understand why everyone is running over everybody or crash each other for race wins.
People ask me all the time like, ‘Why don’t you take these kids under your wing and teach them and tell them.’ I’m like, we’re in a completely different era now. There is no fixing what we’ve got going right now with everybody running over everybody. They would much rather crash than win a race, I don’t get it.
Kyle Busch added.
Tony Stewart played an important role in Kyle Busch learning racing etiquette
If there any driver in the garage that knows how to change from an over aggressive youngster to a respectful driver that’s, Kyle Busch. Just like the youngsters now, when Busch was coming up the ranks, he was infamous for ruffling the feathers of his veterans’ rivals.
But he was forced to change due to the intervention from the veteran drivers, who took the responsibility of changing him by taking him under their wings. This mentor relationship is no longer prevalent in NASCAR.
An interaction with Tony Stewart one day at Las Vegas, show them having a sketchy incident. Furious over it, Stewart called Busch back to his motorhome and gave him a proper warning as well as some string advises on how to succeed racing clean.
We went into this bus and he was like ‘hey man, you’re young and fast, you can do this, you’re going to be a multiple race winner, champion, you’re going to be fine but you just have to figure out how to rein it all in and be under control and do the things,’ how that era of how things were done.
Kyle Busch said.
Kyle Busch has a problem with Carson Hocevar
In the same interview, Kyle Busch talked about Carson Hocevar, the youngster who is the perfect representations of the issues the sport has. The Spire Motorsports driver is infamous for making over aggressive choices on the track and already had multiple run ins this season.
Kyle Busch knowns the youngster from his teenage years and recalled a time when he realized Hocevar has some serious issues. During one of their sprint car duels, then the 13–14-year-old Hocevar dumped Busch and didn’t even apologize to him.
This left a bad taste, as Busch expect to get some respect considering he was a champion Cup driver them. He sees the same thing repeating nowadays in the Cup with the Spire driver and believes the lack of a proper mentor for him is one of the reasons behind the issue.
At the moment, Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain seems to be the one that is playing the mentor role for Hocevar, but it doesn’t seem to work well. Since both Hocevar and Busch race for Chevy, it would be interesting to see if the two times Cup champion would step up and have the talk with the youngster.
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