MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Kyle Busch already beat his fellow NASCAR championship contenders this week and even made some money off of them.
In New York on Tuesday promoting Sunday’s season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Busch, Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick were stuck in “heavy traffic” on their way back to their hotel. They were about five miles away but barely moving, so Busch decided to run it.
The No. 18 Toyota driver made a bet that he could arrive at the hotel on foot faster than they could driving. So Busch mapped it out, he changed his shoes and he, along with a cameraman — who works for Pro Sports Management, the company that represents Hamlin — got out of the van and took off running.
We got whamboozled in NYC pic.twitter.com/SToxhwMbVv
— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) November 13, 2019
Hamlin said Thursday at NASCAR’s championship media day that it was his idea to get his teammate to jog through Midtown Manhattan with the temperature in the mid-30s, joking that he was “just trying to hamper my competition” ahead of NASCAR’s title race.
Busch was going to get a few hundred dollars from them just for doing it, Truex, told For The Win on Thursday at NASCAR’s Media Day, adding that he initially put down $100. But they were going to kick in a few hundred more if he actually won the bet. Truex said he would double his offer while Hamlin’s payout went from $100 to $300.
Sweating and panting by the time he was done, Busch won the race by a lot.
It took him about 20 minutes to get to the hotel, and he FaceTimed with the other drivers still in the van to prove he made it. But that’s when they guessed something was amiss.
“Somebody’s full of [expletive] here,” Hamlin said in a video posted to his social media channels.
Turns out that while the driving route said their hotel was about five miles away, Busch looked at the directions for walking, which dropped the distance to fewer than two miles.
“I’m glad I had a witness go with me, and he’s just as whipped as I am,” Busch told his fellow championship contenders while FaceTiming with them.
“[I was] zig-zagging in and out of traffic, and it was pretty awesome. And I was in the middle of the street for a while.”
Eventually, Hamlin, Truex and Harvick figured out how Busch got the best of them. Obviously, they were in disbelief that Busch ran a 4.5-minute mile in shoes borrowed from the cameraman who tagged along, but not even two miles in 20 minutes makes a lot more sense.
“We just realized we got whamboozled, absolutely whamboozled,” Hamlin said in a video afterward. “We Wazed it at 5.2 miles. That seems like a really long way. However, if you click the ‘walk’ button, he only had to travel 1.8 miles. … He still put a decent pace on it. It is 30-some degrees out here.”
In the end, they combine to owe Busch “about a grand,” Harvick said at media day. But the three NASCAR drivers weren’t the only ones to get in on the bet, Truex told FTW.
During the press conference for the championship drivers Thursday, Busch said Truex still hasn’t paid up yet, and the No. 19 Toyota driver joked he’s “on a payment plan.”
“Although Kyle’s run was impressive, would have been more impressive if he would have had boots on and carrying a camera like the other guy,” Hamlin said.
But in addition to owing Busch money, Harvick had another form of punishment Tuesday as they finished their commute back to the hotel.
“I carried [his] shoes,” Harvick said Thursday of the kicks Busch changed out of. “I felt like I was obligated in losing the bet to carry his shoes back.”
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