The Kyle Busch and John Hunter Nemechek incident at Texas Motor Speedway during the Cup race has become a highly debated incident at the moment. Several fellow drivers, including Denny Hamlin, have given their opinion about the same, and joining the list are Dale Earnhardt Jr. and TJ Majors.

During their recent episode of the "Dale Jr. Download," the two talked about the Busch-Nemechek incident. Dale Jr. echoed Hamlin, who had blamed Busch.

Hamlin explained how the No. 8 RCR driver should have stayed lower on the back straightaway instead of going higher and being at an aero disadvantage. Building on that sentiment, Dale Jr. said:

"Could the 42 have been higher? Yes. Even with all that said, if I am trying to side-draft, I might shade down a little bit to get to him. But if I'm the 8, I am not going to let that guy get to my quarter panel."

However, his co-host, TJ Majors, disagreed with the comments.

“If you're in Denny's situation, yes, in his car, you absolutely get away from him. But the 8 isn't the 11. The 8 doesn't have the speed that 11 has on the straightaways; like, it just doesn't have it.” Majors said. 

"In a situation like Kyle's, it's easy to pin that guy against the wall and just stall both of you out than to try and beat him into the corner than it is to get away because he's got momentum. Like, it's almost better to stall guys out when you're running in equal cars. Denny doesn't run in that a lot, so I don't think Denny knows exactly what it's like to be in that situation," he added.

Kyle Busch and John Hunter Nemechek made contact on the corner exit, which made the former take a hard hit into the barriers. As Nemechek attempted to pass Busch on the outside of Turn 3, the RCR driver went higher, and the resulting contact put the No. 42 driver into the wall.

However, NASCAR took no action against Kyle Busch. But a similar incident involving Ryan Preece and Ty Gibbs took place in the same Cup race. NASCAR took a stand against Preece's maneuver, which didn't sit right with Dale Jr.

Dale Jr. reacts to Ryan Preece's penalty after Texas

On lap 105, Preece made contact with Gibbs, which led to the JGR driver spinning and hitting a wall. Prior to the contact taking place, the No. 60 RFK driver had a meltdown about Gibbs on his radio.

A segment of his radio message was: "All right, when I get to that 54, I’m done with him." This came after he felt Gibbs was driving erratically in front of him.

Unfortunately, NASCAR used this radio message as evidence against Preece for an intentional wreck and penalized him. He was docked 25 points and handed a $50,000 fine.

Dale Jr. did not agree with the decision. He shared his reaction via a video on Dirty Mo Media's X channel, saying, "I honestly don’t agree with this one. If you’re not going to penalize Kyle, which I didn’t think they would, I don’t think you can penalize Preece." 

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Chionia Libania Colaco

Edited by

Yask Kotak