Busch brothers crash out at Bristol; Kyle lashes out

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Sunday was a bad day to be a Busch.

Kyle and Kurt Busch had strong cars in Sunday’s Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway, but both brothers wound up in big crashes and far down the finish order.

Kyle Busch had perhaps the day’s fastest car. He led 256 laps before an apparent rear-end problem sent his first-place Toyota into a spin in front of traffic on lap 358. Near the end of Busch’s slide, his car was hit by the Chevrolet of Justin Allgaier.

Busch, disturbed by the accident and the presumed parts failure, said he didn’t know what was wrong with his car but added that the issue would be dealt with Tuesday in the Joe Gibbs Racing team meeting. He also lashed out at Allgaier, calling the driver and his spotter "morons" after the Allgaier car failed to avoid hitting him despite being several seconds behind.

"The guys do a great job setting them up, but, man, we’ve got parts failures, you know?" Busch said. "You can’t have parts failures in this business. That’s stupid. My Camrys have been fast.

"We’ve just got to stop making stupid mistakes that take us out of races, and, beyond that, the 46 (Allgaier) spotter needs to be fired and the damn driver, too. He’s an idiot. I’ve been wrecking for half a lap, and they come through and clean us out. I mean, there’s plenty of room to miss me. Everybody else seemed to be able to do a good job of it."

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Allgaier said he chose the wrong route in attempting to avoid Busch’s car.

"The spotter was telling me that the No. 18 (Busch) was spinning, and he kept rolling down the hill, so at first I committed to go below him because I was already on the bottom," Allgaier said. "Then he was still coming down the hill, so I tried to go out around the outside of him, and unfortunately I just didn’t make it. ... Sorry to Kyle. That is the worst possible scenario when the leader spins out and you hit them."

Kurt Busch, leading the race, started an 11-car crash on lap 373 when he moved too low on the track on a restart, sending his Chevrolet into a slide. As the field roared to speed after the green flag, Brad Keselowski hammered Busch’s car on the driver’s side, and both cars dropped to the track apron.

Behind the leaders, nine other drivers crashed as they tried to avoid the mayhem at the front. Ryan Blaney experienced the hardest hit, destroying the front end of his Ford.

Busch admitted his error.

"I think I just missed the bottom groove by a few inches, got loose and the wreck was on," he said. "The way that our car was restarting it felt comfortable, it felt good. That inside (lane) with the rosin ... if you don’t hit it exactly right you lose a lot of time. I tried to make up for it and got loose."

The crash ended Kurt Busch’s streak of completing every lap this season.

Follow Mike Hembree on Twitter @mikehembree.