Kyle Busch and John Hunter Nemechek clash as Texas rage boils over

Kyle Busch and Texas Motor Speedway really don’t seem to get along. Despite being a four-time NASCAR Cup Series race winner there, he’s also had as many crazy incidents that one could easily describe as a tantrum.

The fourth came in the final laps of Sunday’s Würth 400. Things were going fine for Busch, who was battling for a top ten in what he hoped would be a career revitalisation under new crew chief Andy Street. With two laps to go, he and John Hunter Nemechek collided while fighting for 12th.

They ran down the backstretch side by side, with Busch getting clipped into the outside wall. As they entered Turn 3, Busch drove up into Nemechek and sent him into the wall.

The damage dropped Busch and Nemechek to 20th and 21st, respectively. Over the radio, Nemechek called Busch an “ass” and questioned his driving. Busch insisted he did nothing wrong, writing on X that Nemechek “apparently doesn’t know where the [right side] of his car is and where he is in relation to the outside wall.”

While Busch had been faring well for much of the day, it was obvious he was on edge. Busch long had a reputation for lashing out at others, which seemed to mellow in recent years before his recent struggles—encapsulated by what is now a 104-race winless streak—got him back on the brink. He openly cursed out pole-sitter Carson Hocevar for his driving style on the radio, accusing him of “fucking stupid shit that makes him a fucking asshole.” When his spotter Derek Kneeland urged him to calm down, Busch retorted by calling him a “psych major” and told him to “put a bag of ice on your crotch.”

Texas in particular has been a sore spot for Busch and his meltdowns. At the 2007 spring race, he crashed and immediately left the track while his team worked on making repairs so they could rejoin the race and salvage some points. With Busch nowhere to be found, one of his pit crewmen asked Dale Earnhardt Jr.—who retired earlier in the race with an engine failure—if he’d like to fill in for the rest of the day. Curious about how a rival car worked, Earnhardt acccepted and finished the race. Busch left Hendrick at the end of the season while Earnhardt joined the stable.

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In the fall of 2010, the now-Joe Gibbs Racing driver spun. After pitting for new tyres, he received a penalty for speeding so had to return to the pits and wait a lap. While parked in his pit stall, Busch raised both middle fingers to the NASCAR official overseeing the penalty and told them, “Fuck you guys.” NASCAR responded by making him pit a second time for two laps.

Busch protested the penalty by asserting NASCAR was “going against the Constitutional rights of everybody” like free speech. Crew chief Dave Rogers, tired of his antics, begged Busch to “stop, please! Man, we all worked too hard for this, you’re costing us! […] They always have the last word.”

Just a year later, Busch was competing in the Truck Series race when he got squeezed into the wall by Ron Hornaday. Under the ensuing caution, he disregarded his spotter’s pleas to calm down and tailgated Hornaday before hooking him into the wall. Hornaday was third in the Truck championship at the time and would be mathematically eliminated from title contention by the wreck. Busch was suspended for the rest of the weekend, also killing his quest for a Cup title.

Guess that’s why his nickname is “Rowdy”. Quite a stark contrast to Chase Elliott, who doesn’t have any nicknames save for “Chase” (his real name is William), as he coolly held off Denny Hamlin to win for the second time in 2026.

Fords absent from O’Reilly

The last time a NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race didn’t have any Fords, the Soviet Union still existed and Michael Schumacher was about to wrap up his rookie season in Formula 1.

After 12,606 days or 34 years, 6 months, 5 days, that streak came to an end on Saturday. The 38 cars competing in the Andy’s Frozen Custard 340 consisted of 32 Chevrolets and six Toyotas, with not a single Mustang.

It was the first NOAPS race since the 1991 season-ending Winston Classic at Martinsville with zero Ford cars. Like at Texas, no Blue Ovals were present in the 32-car grid or even among the four drivers who failed to qualify. By comparison, the race before that had a quartet of Fords while the 1992 season opener featured six.

Ford’s decline in NASCAR’s second tier has been gradual. Despite winning championships as recently as 2023, the company slowly phased out its investment into the series as there was little reason to focus on it with an already loaded Cup Series driver lineup and a solid foundation in the Truck Series. Many of the top Ford teams soon defected to Chevrolet like Haas Factory Team and RSS Racing.

By the start of 2026, the only Ford team left was backmarker Hettinger Racing. Their #5 ran the first 11 races with five different drivers and typical results for a team of their calibre before skipping Texas. Hettinger subsequently sold their owner points to Joey Gase Motorsports.

2026 Würth 400 – Results