Dale Earnhardt Jr. disagrees with Kyle Busch, reacts to blaming Chase Briscoe

Last week at Kansas, Kyle Busch was leading when trying to lap Chase Briscoe and spun out. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is weighing in. Busch was quick to call out the lack of etiquette in NASCAR, but Earnhardt doesn’t think that is a valid excuse.

Kyle Busch is searching for his first win of the season. If he is able to grab a checkered flag in 2024, he will have at least one win each season of his Cup Series career, 20 years in a row.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. understands Busch’s frustration. However, Chase Briscoe didn’t do anything wrong. At least, he didn’t do anything out of the ordinary for racing nowadays.

“I didn’t see him rub him or nothing. Did he touch him?” Earnhardt asked his co-hosts on the Dale Jr. Download.

The Hall of Famer went into his thought process. Yes, Briscoe was a lapped car, but that’s part of racing.

“The lapped car, your first point, you hate to see a lapped car getting in the way of a great battle for the lead. If there weren’t lapped cars, there wouldn’t be many battles for leads,” Dale Jr. explained. “I mean the, one of the things that I get the most excited about as a broadcaster when I’m watching a race is the leader catching lapped traffic. Because I know it could change the dynamics of the top two or top three. It could give the second or third place car an opportunity to make a pass.”

Of course, the feelings from Kyle Busch are legitimate. He should be frustrated. Busch has had to drive lesser equipment this season and hope that it holds on, amid a season of unusually bad luck.

“Listen, I don’t want to dog, this ain’t a dog on RCR,” Earnhardt continued. “They’ve done some really good things to get gains to give him a shot at it, but dude you still know that Kyle Busch is carrying that freaking car on his back. And he’s trying to do too much because he’s always trying to do so much, right, to make that thing competitive. At least that’s the feeling or the temperament that I have when I’m watching it.”

So, what about Busch’s comments after the race? While drivers now don’t race clean, they used to. Does that mean he should expect drivers to race him like the good old days?

“That’s true, 30 years ago, absolutely. But the whole mentality and etiquette in racing is different today. The drivers don’t let each other go anymore,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “They don’t go, ‘Ah man, it’s 50 laps into the race, I’m going to let you go, you’re faster, and then you let me go later, right? That shit ain’t happening anymore, used to happen all the time back in the day. It doesn’t happen anymore, and all these guys race the dogshit out of each other, every restart, for every position, nobody wants to give up even one spot. So the mentality that Chase Briscoe has in that moment is no different than anyone else in the field, and if he’s not a playoff guy, I don’t think he does this.”

Racing is full of bad breaks. Kyle Busch was the victim of a bad break. He could have checked up and lived to fight on with Ross Chastain. Maybe he could have gone low on the backstretch to pass on the inside?

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been around. He knows how these situations end up working out. In today’s racing, you have to expect every car to race you like it’s for the win. If you don’t, it can bite you like it did Busch at Kansas. Will Busch get that elusive win in 2024?