Dale Earnhardt Jr. backs Ross Chastain in last-lap tangle with Kyle Busch

In the final lap of the Toyota / Save Mart 350 on Sunday, Ross Chastain spun out Kyle Busch, ruining what could have very well been a top-five finish for Busch.

In the aftermath, there was plenty of debate about whether Chastain intentionally got into Busch to spin him out or whether it was more innocuous. Former NASCAR drive Dale Earnhardt Jr. seems to believe it was the latter.

“I don’t agree with that. I think that … could Ross have avoided that? Yes,” Earnhardt Jr. said on the Dirty Mo Media podcast. “Could Ross have realized as soon as they both get into the brake pedal, I think there’s a moment where you can go, ‘All right, Kyle is going to equal me into this braking zone.’ And you can tell that really quickly. And you can say, ‘OK, I’m not going to get the spot here.’

“I don’t know if he had that choice or not, but he didn’t run into the 8 on purpose. You see him swing the back. You see the back slip, step out, he corrects into the 8 and then he’s like, at that point I’ve just got to go. Sorry this is happening to you, Kyle Busch, but I’ve got to take care of the rest of my lap.”

While Ross Chastain went on to finish his race in fifth place, Kyle Busch slid all the way into 12th place. That’s enough to make most drivers pretty irate, particularly if the situation was avoidable.

But Earnhardt Jr. provided a lengthy breakdown of what he saw, and he doesn’t believe Chastain was much at fault.

“Had some fireworks right at the end of the race with Ross getting into Kyle Busch,” he said. “Looks like from on-board that NASCAR posted on Twitter that Ross was quite a ways back in that braking zone downhill in the 4. It’s a downhill, right-hander. When you charge that braking zone, in the old cars you will hop, in this car you slide the rear brakes — and slide the rear tires, I mean, lock up the rear brakes. But it’s downhill, and so as you really try to get more, try to go further and get on the brakes really, really hard, the car is trying to tip over, really. So the rear tires are trying to come off the ground and the further you push it the more that happens, so that’s when you get the rear lock up and that’s kind of what happened with Ross.

“He moved over to try to get to the inside. He wants to be able to get to the inside of Kyle before the apex and Kyle also broke into the corner really deep. So they get into the corner, relatively Ross isn’t in position. He knew right in that moment that he was in trouble and just slid the rear tires and wiped the 8 out.”

In other words, Ross Chastain did in fact spin out Kyle Busch, but it didn’t appear to be anything malicious, according to Earnhardt Jr.

Still, it’ll be worth watching the two the next time they’re on the track together as sometimes incidents like these can spill over into future frustrations.

Next up on NASCAR’s schedule is the Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol at the Iowa Speedway on Sunday.