Corey LaJoie said he would not have done anything differently on the restart where he spun Kyle Busch going into Turn 1 at Pocono Raceway.
“You’ve got to take the run,” LaJoie told NASCAR.com. “I’m not the guy that wants to wreck anybody but I think if Kyle blocks only once, then we both go around the corner and live to fight another day. But that second block that he thought he had covered and he didn’t, was what did him and did a couple of other guys in.”
LaJoie spun Busch following contact with the left rear of the No. 8 Chevrolet with 40 laps to go. The two were lined up mid-pack on the restart and were the furthest to the left on the track as the field fanned out charging toward Turn 1.
Busch blocked LaJoie to the left down the straightaway. There was no contact on the initial block, but LaJoie then hit Busch in the left rear, which sent him down onto the apron before his car shot back up the racetrack in the corner and collected Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ryan Preece, Harrison Burton and AJ Allmendinger.
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“Restarts are so crazy there,” LaJoie said. “If you have any momentum, you have to take it and go to the bottom to stake your ground. I got a big push from [Allmendinger] and it was like four wide, and I went to the left rear of [Busch], and he blocked it once and I stayed straight. I was anticipating our bumpers lining up and then pushing him forward and him taking a lane. But he blocked again when I had more position on him, and [I] spun him out.
“Hate it; took out him and some other guys, but that’s just what you have to do. You have to take momentum when you have it because if you don’t, the guy behind you is going to put you in a worse spot than you’re going to put the guy in front of you. That’s just how the racing is. You have to be super aggressive on restarts and sometimes you’re the windshield and sometimes you’re the bug.”
Busch didn’t have much to say about the crash. The two-time series champion told reporters it “doesn’t matter” what he thought when asked if LaJoie had been too aggressive.
“Of course you have mirrors and cameras and everything else, so you try to get in front of the run that’s coming,” Busch said. “I was trying to get in front of that run and sometimes some don’t lift. Kamikaze.”
The incident resulted in Busch’s fifth DNF of the season. LaJoie finished 19th.
“I think Kyle and I have been racing around each other long enough, we’re not going to be smashing into each other on purpose,” LaJoie said. “We both are guys that feel like we belong – certainly him – but I’m not going to say sorry. I’m not sorry about it because that was the thing. And if the shoe was on the other foot, the exact same thing would have happened, and I think he would probably say that.”