Kyle Busch Parked For Cup, Nationwide Races At TMS
11-05-2011 12:44 am

NASCAR has parked Kyle Busch for the weekend after Busch deliberately wrecked Ron Hornaday Jr. during a caution period in Friday night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.

It is the first time NASCAR has parked a Sprint Cup driver for an on-track incident since August 2007, when Robby Gordon was parked at Pocono Raceway. Ted Musgrave was parked after a Truck Series incident in 2007.

Michael McDowell will replace Busch in the Joe Gibbs Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup car for the remainder of the weekend.

“During the truck race last night, we had an incident between the 18 (Busch) and 33 (Hornaday) trucks that resulted in NASCAR parking the 18 truck for the balance of the event,” said NASCAR President Mike Helton. “That’s done under section 9.12 of the rulebook. That gives NASCAR the authority to react during a race weekend. And following the event and after a good deal of conversation and discussion, NASCAR has decided to maintain that parked position on the driver of the 18 truck for the balance of the weekend.

“So basically, what that means is Kyle Busch will not be participating today or tomorrow in the NASCAR event here in Texas,” Helton said.

While NASCAR has encouraged a “boys, have at it” mentality for the last two seasons, Helton said Busch’s actions crossed the line.

“The responsibility that over the past two or three seasons that we’ve given back to the drivers came, I think, with a very clear understanding that there could be a line that got crossed,” said Helton. “And as annoying as the comments that I’ve made personally in the past about, ‘We'll know it when we see it,’ might have been, we saw it last night.”

Busch was not available for comment, but team owner Joe Gibbs said he was talking with sponsors and team members.

“We love our sport and we think NASCAR does a great job of handling things. And we kind of all talked that over and kind of understood what their reasoning was and we trust them,” said Gibbs.

“Our situation now — it’s a tough situation for us and we just want to try and handle it the right way with all the people who are impacted by this. And so, that’s what J.D. (Gibbs, team president) and I will be doing for the rest of this weekend.”