After their altercation both on track on the final lap and on pit road after the race in Las Vegas, NASCAR summoned Kyle Busch and Joey Logano to the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series hauler for a meeting with series officials the following week in Phoenix.
Following the 15-minute session, each driver emerged from the hauler separately.
First was Busch. His response was straight out of the Marshawn Lynch playbook from Super Bowl XLIX.
“Everything is great,” Busch said to every question he was asked. “Really looking forward to getting in my car and being here in Phoenix.”
But after qualifying, he spoke to Jeff Gluck of JeffGluck.com and told him why he punched Logano.
He veered down in front of Logano to avoid slamming into Brad Keselowski and made contact with Logano in the process. He believes Logano took him out as revenge.
“It was instantaneous,” Busch said. “I made a move down the backstretch that cut Joey off — and I had to; I wasn’t just going to roll out of the gas and fall in behind Brad and probably lose spots to more guys behind me. So I made a bold move — I was two-thirds of my way past Logano, and I figured I can wedge my way through there a little bit.
“And I did, and it was instantaneous retaliation. That’s what I thought and that’s kind of what I still think.”
Logano spoke to the media, saying he tried explaining to Busch that he “made a mistake underneath him.”
“He asked for some data. I was able to show him that it was pretty clear, in my opinion, what happened,” Logano said. “So that’s that, and we’ll move.”
Busch said he wasn’t convinced by the data.
Asked if he and Busch are “good moving forward,” Logano said “time will tell.”
“The only thing I can do at this point was to plead my case and say, ‘Hey, it was an honest mistake, it was hard racing at the end,'” he said. “We’re going to try to move on and all I can do now is focus on our Shell Pennzoil Ford and try to win Phoenix.”
