Kyle Busch breaks leg, brother loses appeal on eve of Daytona
DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.— Kyle Busch broke his right leg and left foot in a vicious collision with a concrete wall during Saturday’s Xfinity Series race. He’ll miss the Daytona 500 on Sunday and is out indefinitely.
Busch sustained a right lower leg compound fracture and left mid-foot fracture in the crash with eight laps remaining. Joe Gibbs Racing said he needed surgery on his right leg.
Matt Crafton, a two-time Truck Series champion, will replace Busch in the No. 18 Toyota on Sunday in the season-opening Sprint Cup Series race. It will be Crafton’s Daytona 500 debut.
Busch’s injury occurred when his car slammed head-on into an interior wall that did not have an energy- absorbing SAFER barrier. It’s a similar injury to the one suffered by Tony Stewart in an August 2013 sprint car crash, but not as severe as Stewart’s was a double compound fracture.
Stewart missed the final 15 races of 2013, couldn’t get in a race car until February, 2014, and had a fourth surgery in December to replace the rod in his leg. He walked with a limp for more than a year.
Asombre Joie Chitwood, president of Daytona International Speedway, said the track failed in not having the soft walls and will start next week on having them installed “on every inch of our property.”
“The Daytona International Speedway did not live up to its responsibility today. We should have had SAFER barrier there,” Chitwood said. “We’re going to fix that. This is not going to happen again.”
Track officials will install tire packs along that 850-foot linear square foot of wall that Busch hit in time for the Daytona 500 on Sunday. Chitwood said planning on covering the entire 2.5-mile facility would begin Monday.
As Busch was being treated in hospital, older brother Kurt was in front of NASCAR’s final appeals officer trying to get his indefinite suspension lifted.
Busch was suspended Friday after a Delaware judge said the 2004 champion almost surely choked and beat a former girlfriend last fall at Dover International Speedway. Busch has maintained he did not assault Driscoll, but merely cupped her face as he requested her to leave his motorhome.
Late Saturday night, he lost the appeal, meaning the race will go on without one of the Busch brothers for the first time since 2000.
Stewart-Haas Racing will go with Regan Smith, who rolled his car for the first time in his career in Saturday’s support race. Smith said it was inexcusable for tracks hosting national events not to have SAFER barriers everywhere.
“I’m genuinely furious right now,” tweeted Smith.